Rural Whites Didn't Show Up
Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics breaks down the break down. The short answer to why Romney lost is that he failed to get the rural white vote out. What a major failure. He should have had those people in his pocket. Very disappointing.
An excerpt:
But most importantly, the 2012 elections actually weren’t about a demographic explosion with non-white voters. Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up...
Put another way: The increased share of the minority vote as a percent of the total vote is not the result of a large increase in minorities in the numerator, it is a function of many fewer whites in the denominator...
But in terms of interpreting elections, and analyzing the future, the substantial drop-off in the white vote is a significant data point. Had Latino and African-American voters turned out in massive numbers, we might really be talking about a realignment of sorts, although we would have to see if the Democrats could sustain it with someone other than Obama atop the ticket (they could not do so in 2010). As it stands, the bigger puzzle for figuring out the path of American politics is who these non-voters are, why they stayed home, and whether they might be reactivated in 2016 (by either party).
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Comments:
Nov '12
Re: Rural Whites Didn't Show Up
Trende's analysis of Ohio wasn't based on exit polls. It was based on vote totals from counties that underperformed previous elections. The counties that underperformed were rural counties.
Nov '10
Re: Rural Whites Didn't Show Up
Interesting analysis, Thom. However I didn't like your line "Romney should have had these people in his pocket". Romney ran a dignified, balanced and intrinsically American race that addressed the American people as a whole. I saw no trace of pandering to special interest groups, and very little notion of "our demographic" -- his 47% statement coming the closest to that (but that depends on what one means by these notions!). Now, I think R&R ought to have directed more (non-pandering) messages at specific interest groups and demographics, but that's a different matter. The whole point of this campaign was to speak to Americans as a whole, not "my America". Considering that this failed in a most spectacular way, one has to ask whether the fracturing of America has passed a tipping point. I think it has, but perhaps not the point of no return.