In Part 1, I discussed the gay marriage results of the 2012
election. Now I’m going to go back to
the full picture. The three things I
expected to see and didn’t were some historical mean reversion in voting
demographics, and, based on that, a much closer electoral college. Ultimately, I also thought Gary Johnson would
end up being a spoiler.
Though I don’t view exit polls as a reliable tool to
forecast results, I do view them as a reliable tool to assess
demographics. What we saw is that 2008
is no longer a singular outlier, as 2012 showed similar patterns of highly
elevated youth and minority voting relative to pre-2008 historical norms. Whether this is Obama-centric or indicative
of changing demographics within the US remains to be seen. I suspect it’s both, but more the latter than
the former.
Because of misreading demographics, I misread the electoral
college. In particular, I thought
Florida and Virginia would definitely go to Romney. Those two surprised me the
most. I was also surprised that Romney
didn’t fare better in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, as I expected him
to pick up at least one of those states rather than lose so decisively in all
three. Ohio was tight,
unsurprisingly. Michigan, Pennsylvania,
Nevada, and Iowa going clearly to Obama, along with North Carolina going
clearly for Romney, plus all the other state outcomes, didn’t shock me at
all.
I also was thinking Gary Johnson, as the Libertarian
candidate, had a chance to be the spoiler in a few swing states, though we may
eventually discover that Johnson cost Romney Florida. I overestimated how much support he would
receive, but considering how severely underfunded and disadvantaged the
Libertarian party is (or any party outside the GOP and Democrats), 1% nationwide
is a solid showing for a party only formed in 1971.
With Obama’s victory, the GOP holding the House of
Representatives, and the Democrats holding the Senate with a couple more seats,
we have a whole bunch of no change.
Effectively, this means two more years of the last two years. The American people voted for a split government. They had a taste of life with the Democrats
in full control from 2008-2010 and wisely rejected it once again. We prefer a split over one-party control
because both parties have recently demonstrated questionable judgment and
party-line thinking when presented with full control. I think the Democrats did worse damage in two
years 2008-2010 than the GOP did in six years 2000-2006, but that’s another
story for another day.
Also, I need to note that, between 2010 and 2012, the GOP
has now blown at least five very winnable Senate seats, namely Delaware and
Nevada in 2010 by picking Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle and Missouri and
Indiana in 2012 by going with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. I’m also inclined to add Linda McMahon from
Connecticut to this list. No Republican
was going to beat Dick Blumenthal in 2010 because he was a popular attorney
general for several terms and ran a good campaign, but a stronger one could
have beaten Chris Murphy in 2012, who really was a much weaker candidate than
his margin of victory would indicate.
In any event, with two more years of the last two years, seven
questions linger. I’ll lay all of those
out in Part 3.
Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment