(OK, just a disclaimer before I write a very long post. I've got a cold, so excuse any typos and rambling. It's the drugs talking.)
Yes, victory for Obama. It's a good thing for many reasons, but I'm keeping the cheers to a minimum. This isn't one of those blogs. I am interested in other questions. Why did Obama win? How will the GOP regroup? What did the pundits get right? Wrong? What issues were the most important to the public? What does this mean for health care, climate change, foreign policy, education, the economy, and women?
If a Democratic president can win reelection in this crappy economy, is the GOP sunk? What changes can they make? Should they drop the pro-life agenda? Should they change their immigration message? Should they distance themselves from the crazy wing of the party? Should Romney have distanced himself from Trump, the Tea Party types, and the birthers?
My twitterfeed, which is made up of political wonks, saw this election as a validation of the Nate Silver's prediction model. Yes, Silver has a nice model and, certainly, there was a purposive misinterpretation of his methodology among conservative pundits. But this election was about more than that. Most people don't read Nate Silver. Sure, 20% of the visits to the NYT end up at 538, but that's a small part of the American public. Most people don't visit the New York Times website, even though it feels like everyone we know does. This election was about more than Nate Silver. We need to talk about that.
The Youth Vote. Big turnout in young people. Huffington Post reports, "Voters from ages 18 to 29 represented 19 percent of all those who voted on Tuesday, according to the early National Exit Poll conducted by Edison Research. That's an increase of one percentage point from 2008. Obama captured 60 percent youth vote, compared with Mitt Romney's 36 percent."
FOX News. The punditry on FOX News were in complete disarray last night. It made for excellent TV viewing. It's hard to believe that they didn't have their spin in control before their went to the office that morning. They were in such a bubble, they were blindsided. Rather shocking. The pundits ended up turning on their own quant nerds.
A Realignment of Voting Coalitions. Ross Douthat has one of the most level headed analysis of the election from a conservative perspective. He says that Obama's win represents the victory for the coalition of young voters, women, minorities, and liberal professionals. He concedes that he may have overstated the Republican coalition. "But even less starry-eyed conservatives — like, well, myself — were willing to embrace models of the electorate that overstated the Republican base of support and downplayed the Democrats’ mounting demographic advantage."
The Auto Bailout. This was a key issue in undermining the tradition Republican coalition.
Where to place the blame? Why did Romney lose? Multiple choice: A) Crazy Republicans – Donald Trump, birthers, Tea Party types, and extreme pro-lifers. B) Gaffes, ie 47%. C) Romney was a rich dude. D) Obama made inroads into the Republican coalition with the auto bailout. E) Obama had a stronger coalition.
Even I am getting annoyed at all the crowing about Nate Silver. He aggregated polling data. His success is due to the improvement in polling methods. Some of Silver's supporters don't understand math any better than his distractors. I'm also annoyed whenever polling data takes on more importance among the punditry than policy discussions.
It would be incredibly bad form to write a blog post that included Facebook status updates by my conservative friends. Arg. I can't stop myself. Here's one: "I forsee gun sales going through the roof. Buy all you can before these bastards try to take them away."
Apt. 11d 
The Tea Party cost the Republicans the Senate and very possibly the presidency. I don’t know how you’d disentangle that from the other factors.
Donald Trump should be avoided by everybody.
LikeLike
I say “E”- Obama had a stronger coalition and they came out for him. Very amazing that young people comprised a great percentage of voters this time than last given all we heard about enthusiasm for Obama lagging. I think many Obama supporters were just “quieter” about their support this time.
I agree with MH- the Tea Party and the crazies cost the Republicans the Senate. I’m hearing Dems might have as many as 55-56 seats.
LikeLike
I agree with MH, too. For the past month or so I’ve been posting on my local Patch to counter some of the more bizarre claims of the extremists. I’ve been very nice about it, too (yeah, I don’t poop where I live, or something like that ;). The people who were mainly posting were those with the most outlandish incoherent claims. After the election, when Obama, Warren, and Joe Kennedy (my new Congresscritter–he replaces Barney Frank) were elected, it seemed like there were 100 relieved posts by people who’d previously not posted, expressing joy over the election results. I think the Obama voters were the Silent Majority this time around.
About younger voters: in my class on persuasive writing, I had students debate on and write about Obama vs Romney (it was one of 4 choices). I had two very strong students writing in support of Romney. What struck me about their final papers on the topic was their deliberate distancing from the crazies. They made their cases based on economic reasons and established an ethos that was logical and reasonable. My takeaway is that the Tea Party crap has been a real turnoff for younger people.
LikeLike
my local Patch
Is that something new that I have to decide to figure out or not? Stupid growing social media.
LikeLike
There are Patches in PA, but I don’t know enough about PA to tell you which one is closest to you. Here’s one from Bensalem, a place where I once had the best Indian lunch buffet ever: http://bensalem.patch.com/ .
I like them for the local news. Whenever someone in my town is stopped by the police, it shows up in the local police reports, and I can point at and mock them.
LikeLike
…and I can point at and mock them
I’m sold.
LikeLike
I think the Reps problem going forward is not simply tactical. It is a matter of ideology, identity and policy. They cannot simply “do better with Latinos” without changing their policy options, and in doing that they are going to lose part of their base, which holds on to an ideology/identity that is fearful of multiculturalism. The same can be said of other issues: gay marriage, abortion/contraception, health insurance, etc. The strategic dilemma they face is either hold onto their current ideology/identity and shrink into permanent minority(ha!)political status, or change their ideology/identity and fragment, as base crazies wander away, possibly into a new “conservative” third party.
LikeLike
#2 son says the republicans lost the presidency because none of the republicans who could have won the presidency bothered to run for the presidency. but he also says he doesn’t know who they have who could have won the presidency, just that everyone who did run was laughable from the beginning.
LikeLike
I love the math that Nate Silver (and Sam Wang, at the Presidential Election Consortium) are adding to the debate about prediction, but absent the use of the polls to make “strategic” decisions about campaigns (the essence, substance and surface), they are just data analysis and don’t tell us how or why or what.
XKCD ran a strip in which each of the presidential elections were predicted by something that had never happened before: http://xkcd.com/1122/
2012 ended with “Democratic incumbents never beat their taller challengers” or “No nominee whose first name contains a ‘K’ has lost.” I guess we can now go with the K thing. I thought of the strip when I saw Nate Silver’s comment that Florida always goes as Hillsborough county (Tampa) goes (since 1960). That’s a possible mechanistic relationship, if Tampa is a demographic sample of Florida, but absent good demographic evidence, the sample size is too small to come to a statistical conclusion based on the past performance alone (12 elections is a very small n).
LikeLike
Today’s xkcd says “Breaking: to the surprise of pundits, numbers continue to be the best system for determining which of two things is larger.”
http://xkcd.com/1131/
LikeLike
“They cannot simply “do better with Latinos” without changing their policy options, and in doing that they are going to lose part of their base, which holds on to an ideology/identity that is fearful of multiculturalism. ”
In other words, they have to move towards the center, and hope that they can build a new coalition. I’m a liberal Democrat. But, I believe that there’s no doubt that Republicans could do that, if they are willing to move away from their extremists and think about which of the many views they’ve taken as ideologies are ideas and how many of them are can be added to the strategy pool.
I’m not a Republican so I can’t say how they accomplish this realignment (and, suspect that a number of them are retreating into bubbles instead) and I’m biased, but it seems to me that they could reconsider whether they want to make the culture war questions the base of their ideology (really, can’t they just let other people get married if they want to? I know abortion is tougher, but they could switch to methods to decrease numbers of abortions rather than trying to legislate women’s decision making) and they could apply the economic ideas of less spending, less government, balanced budgets without the ideology of “no new taxes.”
LikeLike
When I think about the 2000 election, the 2008 election and this latest election – the biggest issue that strikes me is utter confusion on why the losing candidate picked the VP they did.
Al Gore’s choice of Joe Lieberman still makes me shake my head in confusion. What did Lieberman bring to the ticket that wasn’t already there? How did it help Gore reach out to independents or undecided Republicans?
McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin made me turn sharply away from him as a viable candidate (I had supported him in 2000 – giving money and going to rallies).
And when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan – I said to my husband (in all seriousness), “If the Romney/Ryan ticket wins, we are leaving the country.”
Here I am, a registered Republican for years (though I have never just voted a straight ticket) and the VP choice (above all) made me turn from the last two Republican presidential tickets. The pandering shown in VP choice on the republican side these last two elections has been incredibly disheartening. And makes me want to distance myself from a party I use to support.
I loved Lindsay Graham’s quote regarding if the Republicans lost this election – it wasn’t because they weren’t big enough hard asses. I just wish more in his own party would listen to him.
LikeLike
I live in HP near Obama’s house. In 2008 there were Obama signs everywhere. This year, I’ve seen one. Everyone here still supports Obama, and voter turnout was high. I think silent majority is right.
I think a lot of the higher turnout was a result of constant repetition of the punditry that young people and minorities were disaffected and weren’t going to vote, so Obama would lose. I think this actually angered people and got them out voting. It seems at some point pundits decided there was a large enthusiasm gap, and kept hammering on about it in the face of any evidence to the contrary. Also, the incredibly crude and obvious attempts to surpress voter turnout among minorities or other ‘likely Democratic’ constituents also backfired, and very likely helped Obama win OH and FL.
LikeLike
I’m a liberal Democrat. But, I believe that there’s no doubt that Republicans could do that, if they are willing to move away from their extremists and think about which of the many views they’ve taken as ideologies are ideas and how many of them are can be added to the strategy pool.
Yes. Absolutely. I am NOT a Liberal Democrat, in any context other than national American politics, where I am apparently a left-wing extremist. I voted for Republican Sam Katz for mayor of Philadelphia. I have voted for Republican Councilpersons. If I lived in NYC, I would probably vote for Bloomberg.
And yet I have NEVER voted for a Republican for President, Senator, Congressperson, or Governor. There are just too many obvious viewpoints that I hold, that Conservative David Cameron holds in England, that Conservative Angela Merkel holds in Germany, but no federal or statewide Republican candidate has ever held anywhere that I have ever lived that are deal breakers. When Chris Christie talked about the financial problems in the state — a problem that Democrats were ignorings — I wanted to vote for him. And then he talked about the priority of changes he would make to fix the problems, and all of the other things he would do, and I realized that I just couldn’t.
I am a registered Democrat, and do not consider myself anywhere NEAR a swing voter. I just really WANT to be a swing voter, if the Americans Republicans would drop their assault on so many issues that are much more important to me, so I could agree with them on the 1/3 of the issues where I think they are right.
LikeLike
on the guns question, this happened in 2009 as well.. many of the NRA types believe the President wants to restrict their access to guns and ammunition. They believe this on no evidence whatsoever, only what they are told by Fox News, Beck, Limbaugh, et al. There were ammunition shortages for the whole of 2009, even though the manufacturers ramped up production. I know guys with enough ammo stockpiled to fight a small war; one neighbour has 30 guns, I guess he and his wife could hold off the Feds invading our suburb, for several hours..
Sen Lindsey Graham forecast the Republican loss with an acute analysis: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
sasha, “If the Romney/Ryan ticket wins, we are leaving the country.”
My son wondered if we were going to Australia or Canada.. woke up this morning, asked for results, said “oh good, we don’t have to leave”.
Also, looks like all of the ‘legitimate rape’ candidates were defeated. Oh good, again.
LikeLike
I agree that the GOP needs to distance itself from the extremist rhetoric and Donalt Trump but I think the public has to become more informed on what’s at stake. Invoking the hard fought women’s movement of the 60s and 70s is not accurate, and an affront to the women who did the hard work on the front lines that was needed AT THAT TIME. We need fewer red herrings from the left. And fewer photo ops with Governor Christie while Staten Island is in ruins. The American public clung to the quick sound bites from Obama this time around, nothing more…ie: Romney is just a liar, he will close down Planned Parenthood/throw women back to the stone age and other hypocritical or non factual easy to digest sound bites. As a woman, working mom of daughters… the platform for Obama this election and his divisive, lacking in decorum commentary was offensive to my intelligence, at best. His desperate measures got him elected this time around, while the country flounders and servicemen die while he watches in the Situation Room and the media leaves all of it unchecked. Again, an uninformed public.
LikeLike
“Again, an uninformed public.”
If Republicans stay in that rhetoric bubble it’ll be a good thing for me, ’cause, as I said, I am a liberal Democrat. Republicans can continue to test the hypothesis that it’s an “uninformed public” that results in their loss (we left wing Democrats are prone to that hypothesis when we loose, too, that if the people just understood, they would vote for us).
But, to take a concrete example of a demographic that probably made a difference in Florida, Colorado, and Nevada (and is growing), Republicans tried to attract Hispanics with rhetoric while actively campaigning against the issue that was of major importance to them — immigration. I’m guessing that Republicans could make real inroads in the Hispanic vote (which is conservative on a lot of counts), but, it’s going to require a change in ideas, not just “informing” Hispanics.
I’m guessing there are a number of others who can be flipped, flipped enough to change outcomes at a national level. But the public isn’t going to be “informed” better in a way that Republicans can capitalize: the Republicans had just as much opportunity to get their message out as did the Democrats. It was rejected, by a small but significant majority of the people.
LikeLike
If Republicans stay in that rhetoric bubble it’ll be a good thing for me, ’cause, as I said, I am a liberal Democrat.
Yes. I think this piece should be pasted all up and down RNC headquarters.
LikeLike
Ragtime,
I spent part of the summer in Germany staying with elderly German Christian Democrats. They are huge Merkel supporters. They are also far to the left of Obama. Just how Right-shifted the US is is incredible. Here, the national conversational framework is skewed in such a way that certain conversations can’t even be on the table, and conversations that are on the table here are simply baffling to Europeans (like healthcare). I’m on the left in any country, but at least in Europe I feel like I’m in the same conversation, and living in the same world, as people on the center-Right. I also feel like I share similar many similar values and end goals, even I think the policies necessary to get there differ. I’m less and less sure that’s true in the US.
LikeLike
There are lots of ways to aggregate data. It looks to me like Silver’s is an attempt to do so in a sophisticated way that deals with both sampling error and non-sampling error in the polls, taking advantage of the fact that each polling house has taken many polls, and that the non-sampling error within house is correlated. This means that n is far greater than 12 for the hard part of the problem, which is the non-sampling error. At least I think that’s what he’s doing.
LikeLike
Also, xkcd seems to understand very well how to tell when a quantitative approach is best
LikeLike
Fave from Twitter “The McGovern coalition just called. It’s a majority now.”
When asked 2009 or so how that hopey-changey stuff was working out, I was prone to reply, “Great! And by the way, we’re coming for your guns on Tuesday.” But I’m mean that way sometimes.
One big reason Obama won is that the campaign’s people had been busting serious ass in Ohio since about mid-2011. Kay at Balloon Juice has been my main source for reports, but it’s completely in character with pretty much everything the big O has run. Not a lot of fuss, not a lot of flash, lots and lots of hard work. He and his team have always been like that; check out this article from Hilzoy in October 2006, or dig up reports of his work mandating video recording of police interrogations in Illinois.
LikeLike
Nobody loved Romney enough to spend that much time in Ohio.
LikeLike