Romney's Internal Polling

How did they get this so wrong? "Heading into Election Day, the Romney campaign's final set of internal poll numbers showed their candidate with a 6-point lead in New Hampshire, a 3-point lead in Colorado, a 2-point lead in Iowa, a 3-point lead in Florida and near ties in Virginia and Pennsylvania."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/why-romney-lost/index.html?hpt=hp_c2



• It was Sandy's fault. The storm got our pens and paper wet and made it was hard to add up the numbers correctly.

  Karl%20R.

• Because they suck at running campaigns? He would've driven this country off the cliff before giving him and all his rich and Mormon friends golden parachutes. He's incompetent. The biggest lie he ever told was that he wasn't.

• They just assumed that blacks, latinos and kids were all too lazy to vote. They thought that 2008 was a fluke, and they would go back to not caring. So wrong.

• they were sure all the voter suppression tactics were going to work (which is why i thing Rove would not believe Ohio numbers) and they only listen to themselves. the "real" world never intrudes on their world -- that's why they had a poll unskewerer to show the truth to themselves.

• R3 - That explains Ohio, but it doesn't explain New Hampshire. There aren't enough black people there.

• FOX News Megyn Kelly to Karl Rove: "is this just math that you do as a republican to make yourself feel better?"

• The biggest mistake the GOP made was their aggressive and very overt attempts at voter suppression and intimidation. I think it backfired on them big time. I think it frightened and/or angered a lot of people into making an extra effort to make their vote count, even if it meant voting early or standing in line forever.

• The polls had been showing Romney behind Obama all year. All they had to do was look at them, or to look at the numbers on Nate Silver's website or at the Princeton Election Consortium. Instead they chosen to listen only to Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.

  2012%20Poll%20Troll

• chosen = chose

  2012%20Poll%20Troll

• It sounds like whoever was feeding Rove the internal polls was protecting their jobs. Having watched Rove try to bully Fox's analysts into backing down (a ploy that worked for him four years before), I'm sure the Republican party's pollsters were cowed. Paying people to lie to you can't be a good idea when you're running a campaign.

• That was my point 2012PT. Their pollster was concocting a fantasy for some odd reason.

• R11=OP Oh, and thanks for everything, 2012PT.

  OP

• Nobody says - or said, rather - NO to Mittens Romney.

• I am curious who didn't vote. In 2008 Obama and McCain had a combined 130 million votes. This year they aren't even at 120 million. I know there are still some votes to count but it's still a significant drop - most of it coming from the Democratic side.

• Obama went down largely among white males, R14.

  2012%20Poll%20Troll

• 2012PT, so they switched to Romney? But then some people simply didn't vote at all. I'm curious what was the demographic that dropped significantly. Or have they figured that out. I thought young people turned out like 2008. African Americans too.

• R16, Obama increased his Latino vote from 67% in 2008 to 71% in 2012 (Latino Decisions says today it may actually be as high as 75%). Obama got 93% of the African American vote compared to 96% in 2008, but they still came out in the same basic numbers, as did younger voters. Obama went from about 71% of the LGBT vote in 2008 to 77% of the LGBT vote in 2012. Obama also won 70% of the Asian-American vote, and I believe about 65% of the Jewish vote. The main decline was among White voters where he went down to 39%.

  2012%20Poll%20Troll

• Voter turnout was lower than 2008 and 2004. How exactly did Obama get more black and young voters to vote than 2008? From what I was seeing enthusiasm was down across the board for this election compared to the last two. Romney was a weak candidate. Republicans really didn't want him. He did pretty well on election day. In 2010, polls underestimated the Republican victory. Republicans therefore thought that the same thing would happen in 2012.

• R14 - There's probably a million or two fewer votes due to Sandy.

• Watching a flabbergasted Rove assert Ohio wasn't over was aws. I keep waiting for him to say 'but we fixed it.'

• I saw a pundit on TV say that evangelicals didn't turn out like they did in 2008. I'm assuming due to the Mormon thing. Everyone thought that evangelicals had moved past Romney's Mormonism, but it did hurt him in the end.

• R6 so Megyn actually said something smart?

• Of course it did, R21. Mormonism is not a religion whose perception is improved by familiarity.

• This is what happens when statisticians tell the clients what they want to hear. And that's why I quit working as a statistician.

• R3 Well, if they looked at 2010, they had every reason to believe that. When people stayed home in 2010, we got the Tea Party. We need to make DAMN sure that doesn't happen in 2014.

• Based on how fat those evangelical Christians looked years ago, even if they are still around, I doubt many of them could find the energy to get up and vote anymore.

• I knew we should've used Ann less. A little bit of her goes a long way.

  Mittens

• [quote] Voter turnout was lower than 2008 and 2004. How exactly did Obama get more black and young voters to vote than 2008? Preliminary Tallies: Without Youth Vote, Obama Would Have Lost Election Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 made up a bigger share of the electorate on Tuesday than they did in past elections, according to preliminary tallies, with the percentage young voters standing at 19 percent. And President Obama overwhelmingly won that group compared to Mitt Romney. Though returns are still coming in, several groups that study the youth vote say they are confident Romney's lack of appeal to youth lost him the presidency. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which has studied youth voting habits since 2002, younger voters were especially key for Obama in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/11/07/preliminary-tallies-without-youth-vote-obama-would-have-lost-election

• I once heard a client say the following about poll results: "Oh, no, that isn't going to give us the answer we want."

• New Hampshire went for Bush in 2000 due in part to "Clinton fatigue." It went for Kerry and Obama in '04 and '08. I think the Republicans assumed New Hampshire was in play this year due to "Obama fatigue." They forgot that their own constant bashing of Obama was not the genuine "fatigue" that sets in with voters who have had it with one party or another. The Republicans were deafened by the roar of their own voices.

• Let's say they didn't all drink the Kool-Aid, and let's say that reality sank in about 3 weeks ago. Could they have changed the outcome at that point? With 3 weeks to go, a shitload of money, and a clear understanding that it's now or never, could they have changed their game plan and still won this thing if they were in full crisis mode?

• [quote]There's probably a million or two fewer votes due to Sandy. I wondered about that...and how many votes were "lost" due to them being affidavit, provisional or absentee and not counted?

• R21, I tried to claim that on DL at the beginning of the summer. Now where's that hateful Repub troll?

• Funny that CNN doesn't mention how it had been shilling the "too close to call" and "Romney has the momentum" memes in the final days of the election.

• Said it a long time ago: Not once did I ever believe it was "legitimately" close and anytime the media said it was, I believed it even less. People don't stay tuned if it's a blowout.

• R22 From her attitude it was clear Megyn thought Rove was talking bs but it was still shocking to hear her say that on-air to him. Best line of the night.

• To answer my own question, I read elsewhere that there were still another five or six million votes counted and added to the Obama and McCain totals the weeks following the elections. So while there were fewer voters than 2008, the number will likely end up being closer than I had originally believed. I've watched Obama move from under 60 million to now over 61 million in the last day.

• Love!

• They were also sure that they would get the Catholic vote by a huge margin. In reality, Catholics gave a big ,"Fuck you" to the bishops and the Pope and votes for Obama 50-48.

• Romney probably feels like he got a real internal pole-ing on election day.

• R31, I don't think three weeks is enough time for the Romney team to have turned this fucker around. Elections are like tankers, it takes a long time to slow, stop or turn them by choice. A huge scandal can do it but that's about it. I don't know about the Mormon thing. It didn't play much of a role in the election (tip of the hat to team Obama for that) nor should it have played one. I don't give a fuck how batshit Mormonism is, other religions are just as fucked up and I do NOT want a religious test for President. Yes, I know we have one because an out Atheist cannot be elected, but I hate it. If the fundies and hardcore Republicans didn't turn out, I wonder if it had anything to do with the flip flops? Did they believe they could trust him on their fave - abortion? I'm surprised that President Obama's numbers are as good as they are, I thought the kids would stay home and they definitely didn't. So yay, kids.

• [quote]Mormonism is not a religion whose perception is improved by familiarity. Hell, one could say that about EVERY religion.

• R42, I disagree. Name 1 other religion that preaches that the laws of the US should be subordinate to that religions's system of beliefs, besides the Cult of Scientology.

• R43, the Christian fundamentalists believe the same thing. That's not a defense of Mormonism, I think they're fucking crazy. I just think that other religious zealots are just as fucking crazy. They all want their version of "what God wants and what god thinks" to be codified in our laws. I look at rightwingnuts bitching about the Muslim Brotherhood or the Taliban wanting political power and laugh. They're the same as the groups they hate - exactly the same.

• At least it's gonna be more civil around here for a while now that the freeper trolls have all been laid off though I did notice one commenting earlier - for old time's sake perhaps? They'll just be low-level nuisances now until the mid-terms get closer.