… While many believed that the auto bailout and attacks on Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat would allow the president to win the state with the support of white working class voters, the exit polls show that Obama did worse among Ohio’s white voters than John Kerry. … Moreover, if […] Read more »
The Republican Party’s electoral map problem
… The numbers paint a very clear picture: Republicans now face the same low electoral-college ceiling that Democrats confronted for much of the 1970s and 1980s — needing everything to go right to win the presidency, much less break the 300-electoral-vote barrier. Why the switcheroo? A few reasons. [cont.] Chris […] Read more »
The GOP polling debacle
For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP’s 2012 trouncing was that they didn’t see it coming. Top party strategists and officials always knew there was a chance that President Barack Obama would get reelected, or that Republicans wouldn’t gain control of the Senate. But down to the […] Read more »
The Culture War and the Jobs Crisis
… Throughout much of the period of conservative domination of presidential elections from 1968 to 1988 — and in terms of Congressional power from 1994 to 2006 — the Republican Party had a major election-day edge: there was far more ideological cohesion and less divisive conflict on the right than […] Read more »
The Party Next Time
When historians look back on Mitt Romney’s bid for the Presidency, one trend will be clear: no Republican candidate ever ran a similar campaign again. … Last Tuesday, Romney won three-fifths of the white vote, matching or exceeding what several winning Presidential candidates, including Reagan in 1980 and Bush in […] Read more »
A Victory for the Pollsters and the Forecasters
Now that the Florida authorities have finally confirmed that President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the Sunshine State by a margin of 50.0 per cent to 49.1 per cent, we have all the results and data we need to talk about what happened in the 2012 election, and who got […] Read more »