Random thoughts on the election results
1. When I predicted Obama would win by 5% I said the one possible game-changer was the debates. Romney’s striking victory in the first debate did change the game, but not enough, probably because he did not follow it up with dynamic performances in the next two debates.
2. The claimed bias of the pollsters was pretty dramatically disproven. If anything, the polls OVERESTIMATED Romney’s support. But, generally, they were right — state-by-state and overall.
3. One of the reasons I gave for predicting Obama would win was the fact that his advertisements were vastly superior to Romney’s. Both sides put out many new ads in the subsequent weeks, but Obama’s were consistently better. Here is the key battleground state of Florida, I never saw either of the ads that Bookworm linked to as examples of good Romney ads. Forthermore, I never saw any ads that stressed Romney’s positive traits, aside from a belated emphasis on his ability to forge coalitions — not a message likely to persuade many votes in the closing days of the campaign.
4. This election was probably the last gasp of straight white men. The changing demographics will make straight white men (the major group that strongly supported Romney) a continuingly shrinking portion of the population. If Republicans/conservatives/some-new-third-party can’t find a way to attract women and minorities to vote for their candidates, they will never win again.
5. One of the theories that conservatives put forward in claiming the polls were wrong was that disaffected Obama supporters would stay home this time around. Not true. They voted in numbers at least comparable to 2008. Even I’m surprised by that, but it is cause for on-going concern to conservatives. Conservatives have always benefitted from the fact that they vote in higher percentages than liberals. That may be changing, as liberals do a much better and more consistent job of turning out their vote.
6. This country is seriously divided and Obama is not likely to do anything but make the division worse.
I look forward to your thoughts on the election, the polls, and where we go from here.