Numbers Part 3

Michael Barone has started pouring over the election return data too and has a new article up on findings thus far.   It mainly fills in some nuance to what has been posted here already and solidifies some beliefs.

Negative campaign ads in the battleground States, hurt Romney more than they hurt Obama:

"Obama owes most of his electoral vote majority of 332 to negative campaigning. His strategists barraged the target states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia with attack ads on Romney for months. 

The ads took a toll. Preliminary figures show that outside the eight clear target states, Obama's percentage declined by 2.8 points. In the firewall states, it was down only 1.4 and in five other target states down only 2.1."

There was however, some interesting (positive?) demographic indicators that relates to some comments regarding voter age:

"White Millennials backed Romney 52 to 44 percent." 

"The Obamaites were less successful in making gains in university counties in the target states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia.  Under-30 voter support for Obama declined from 66 to 32 percent in 2008 to 60 to 37 percent in 2012" 

"The baby boomers cast equal numbers of votes for George McGovern and Richard Nixon in 1972, while their elders favored Nixon by nearly 2-to-1. But this year boomers (now age 45 to 64) backed Romney. "

 The full article can be found here

As a personal side note, once again I find myself annoyed that the Boomer and Millennials get all the press and attention, while my generation in the middle "Generation X" gets no notice.  Sheesh!  No respect!