Numbers
So looking back on the horrible results of the recent election and left with all kinds of questions in my head that could be generally summed up as "what the fuck happened?" I got curious (as is my nature) about the statistics from the popular vote and noticed something that looked odd to me. So I pulled some data from the previous elections and saw something both interesting and discouraging.
Here is the national popular vote for the last few elections.:
| DEMOCRAT | REPUBLICAN | |
| 2012 | 59,127,919 | 56,461,412 |
| 2008 | 69,499,428 | 59,950,323 |
| 2004 | 59,028,439 | 62,040,610 |
| 2000 | 51,003,926 | 50,460,110 |
A few things stand out:
- Overall 13.8 million fewer people voted in this election compared to 2008.
- Obama lost about 10 million votes this year compared to his first election, pretty big drop.
- Romney got about 3.5 million fewer votes this year compared to McCain in 2008.
- If all the people that voted Republican in 2008 for McCain had voted for Romney, Romney would have won the popular vote by 822,000 votes.
So clearly it seems that a large number of 2008 Obama voters didn't vote this year which makes alot of sense...BUT where the hell did all those 2008 Republican voters go this year??? These are the folks I am most annoyed at and whom I most lay the Obama victory at the feat of.
posted by The Mad Builder of Periwinkle at 23:50
5 Comments:
I am astounded that there were less voters in this election than in the 2008 election. Given how poorly the democrats and obama did in the mid-term election, I expected them to have a poorer turnout. However, to think that more Republican/Conservative/Moderate/Independents would get out to vote for McCain in 2008 than would get out to vote against obama in 2012 is both suspicious and amazing if true. Especially since the McCain moderates and independents didn't get out and vote for obama either. I have no doubt that the democrats would rig an election if they could do it technically, and certainly our media wouldn't do anything to point it out. There are really only 2 conclusions one can draw from the numbers, either the democrats did rig the election or Romney was even a poorer candidate than McCain, and I'm having trouble buying that.
Romney was a poor candidate. The far, far Right wouldn't vote for a Mormon, so lost votes there. McCain, with all his foibles was the "rock star" of the republicans. Romney is just the guy who had less crap stuck on him after the primary process. Also, I believe the Libertarian Party siphons more and more Republicans every election cycle since the core Republican leadership continues to make social issues, such as abortion, central tenets of the platform instead of fiscal responsibility and smaller government.
As far as voter fraud goes, I am certain there was some, the Chicago machine perfected that, but I doubt it made any difference. Popular vote does not elect the President. One could ask Dewey (if he were alive.)
I think the problem lies in the way states differ in Electoral College allotment. Big cities with their Government-dependant voters pull the all-or-nothing Electoral states into the blue.
Rigging the election does't make 13.8 million votes vanish. I personally just don't buy that from a complexity/logistical/organizational standpoint, even though I'm sure there was fraud going on. People just didn't show up. A hell of a lot of people sat this election out and many voted for other throw-away candidates. Plenty of people to have given one candidate or the other an overwhelming landslide.
So I'm happy that 10 million former Obama voters learned their lesson after 2008 and refused to give their vote to Obama again. That gives me some hope. But where the hell did all those 2008 Republican voters go this year?
As to the Romney being a poorer candidate...I don't really believe that either...not compared to McCain for sure. But I feel that is almost irrelevant at some level. As Conservatives we frequently talk about how important it is to treat people like adults and expect individual responsibility for people's choices. So part of that being an Adult is recognizing the math and the facts of the election when you vote whether you like it or not. Bottom line, either Obama or Romney was going to get the job. Mathematically, statistically, realistically on Nov 6th there was absolutely no real chance of any other outcome. Though Romney wasn't my 1st or 2nd choice when election day came none of that mattered. I was damned sure I wasn't going to enable Obama getting re-elected. I was the same with McCain and he wasn't my even my 3rd choice. So honestly, even if Romney was a poorer candidate for Conservatives than McCain, he was still a MUCH better choice for Conservatives than Obama. And again like it or not that binary choice was the only realistic choice.
The Libertarians got their biggest popular vote this election compared to last 3 elections (614,000 higher than last year). Did some of those REP votes go there? Perhaps. Although the total "third party vote" was overall pretty close to what it was the previous 2 elections.
All I can say is that apparently for those Rep "dropouts" the last 4 years was not that bad for them, and four more years of Obama was a better choice to them than voting for Romney. I hope they're happy with themselves. May they get all the the Obama Government Love they deserver over the next 4 years. Perhaps 4 more years of the lash may sharpen their minds.
BTW...anyone who wants to do there own number crunching on this can get raw data from the below site. Its a pretty extensive set of data going back to 1789.
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html
Popular vote doesn't elect the president, however statistically the Electoral vote will align with the Popular vote the overwhelming majority of the time in a primarily 2 party race. There have only been 4 instances in 200+ years of the Electoral winner losing the Popular vote. And I believe in almost all of those three instances there was a larger draw off of votes to 3rd & 4th Party Candidates involved.
Regardless, I think the Popular vote tells a lot of the story. When 13million people chose not to vote, that says something. When a Party loses raw voter participation (i.e. McCain vs Romney popular vote) that says something.
Dewy vs Truman, totally different story. Dewy actually lost both the Popular and Electoral vote to Truman. The famous newspaper headline was the result of all the pollsters failing to predict how voters would vote and a newspaper being arrogant enough to believe their pollsters couldn't be wrong.
Addendum...with the recent updates from Florida and others the Popular vote has changed a bit, but the same pattern still holds.
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