A new survey conducted after the election last week confirms that winning an overwhelming majority of white Christian voters is no longer sufficient to secure the presidency. The 2012 Post-Election American Values Survey, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), found that like previous GOP candidates, Governor Mitt Romney’s base […] Read more »
The Role of the Rising American Electorate in the 2012 Election
Barack Obama won because he recognized a New America. The President managed only 39 percent of the white vote, the lowest white percentage recorded for a winning national candidate, and suffered a 12-point swing against him among independent voters, but won both the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide […] Read more »
Misreading Election 2012
Postelection talk of “lessons learned” is often exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012. A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base—notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans—turned out for him. Second, […] Read more »
Young Voters in the 2012 Presidential Election
An estimated 23 million young Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2012 presidential election which is on par with voting rates during the 2008 presidential election. CIRCLE estimates that youth voter turnout was 50 percent of those (18-to-29) eligible to vote. … This CIRCLE fact sheet summarizes […] Read more »
Obama’s win shouldn’t be surprising
It’s both the most often repeated and ridiculously misleading statistic of campaign 2012: that no president since FDR has ever been reelected with unemployment over 7.2 percent. True, but no one bothers to explain that until Ronald Reagan won by an 18-point margin, capturing 49 states, despite being “weighed down” […] Read more »
America’s roaring twentysomethings: How young voters won the culture wars
The 1990s culture wars were fought over many social issues that many on the right thought were being redefined from their traditional normals by progressive activists and the liberal media for the next generation. Three of the key points of contention were abortion, gay rights, and recreational drug use. The […] Read more »