I think the Talk Radio People are basing it off the preliminary returns early on Wednesday morning, which had Romney four million votes below McCain, but what they forgot about is the mail-in votes on the West Coast. Romney ended up over 60 million (compared to 59 for McCain), but Obama pushed over 65 and thus even if there was four million, it wouldn't have been enough.
Romney won the independent vote and is a moderate, but there's no such thing as too moderate to win. It was a myth for McCain and Dole too. They lost because things were going great in 1996 and Clinton was seen as part of the reason and 2008 was a huge Democratic year. Romney lost a close election where Obama peaked at the right time.
I disagree with the assertion that Romney is a moderate, in may ways he was more solid then Bush on a good number of issues, especially on immigration.
The reason that Romney won the independent vote is because a number of Republican IDers switched over to indentifying as independents because of the debt ceiling controversy, The War on Women thing and Todd Akin. Therefore even though the electorate was made up of a larger percentage of conservates then 2004 (26% to 23%), the party ID advantage was much more favorable towards the Dems then it was in 2004.
I don't know if that's the reasons why people switched from Republican to Independent. The debt ceiling sounds more like a reason for Democrats to switch to Independent. If Republicans switched to Independent, then how did the percentage of conservatives make up a larger percentage of the electorate?
