Why many thought Obama would lose the popular vote

[I Will Not Be Wrong]

So before the 2012 election, I kept hearing from people saying that Romney was going to win the popular vote and President Obama would win the Electoral vote, and I found several articles on this. Yet, Romney lost the popular vote by four percent to the President, how did this happen?

[IceSpear]

[Lincoln Republican]

New York

California

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Voters

[DS0816]

So before the 2012 election, I kept hearing from people saying that Romney was going to win the popular vote and President Obama would win the Electoral vote, and I found several articles on this. Yet, Romney lost the popular vote by four percent to the President, how did this happen?

On Election Night, they had the national gender vote nailed down.

One thing that was neglected was considering every state important. Associated Press announced, in advance, it would poll 31 of the 50 states. Ignored were Top-10-ranked Texas and Georgia. No state is unimportant.

Why I state that no state is unimportant is this reason: In 2008, Barack Obama, as the Democratic pickup, won the U.S. Popular Vote by a percentage margin of 7.26 points. To win a 2012 Republican pickup of the U.S. Popular Vote, Mitt Romney needed a national shift of 7.27 percentage points to materialize with a minimal win of 0.01 percentage points.

How many states shifted 7.27 percentage points Republican (toward Mitt Romney)? The answer was just nine. 07:00 p.m. ET: Indiana (Republican pickup); 07:30 p.m. ET: West Virginia; 08:00 p.m. ET: Illinois and Missouri; 09:00 p.m. ET: North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming; 10:00 p.m. ET: Utah and Montana.

Getting only nine states to shift to the level necessary that would be indicative of being able to win over the U.S. Popular Vote cannot feasibly suffice. In 2008, the Democratic-pickup-winning Barack Obama was dealing with John Kerry's 2.46 percentage points loss from 2004. How many states did Obama shift by 2.47 percentage points? The answer is 43. (The holdouts: John McCain's home state Arizona plus Massachusetts, as well as the five which actually had Republican shifts in an election for which they were the incumbent party who lost the White House. Those five were Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.) Ronald Reagan easily flipped out Jimmy Carter, in 1980, dealing with Gerald Ford's popular-vote margin loss of 2.06 percentage points. Reagan needed to gain 2.07 percentage points to win by at least 0.01 percent. The amount of states which delivered a Republican pickup of the U.S. Popular Vote to Reagan were 46. (The holdouts were Hawaii, Michigan, Rhode Island and, the one state which actually shifted Democratic, Vermont.)

"News media" does not want us to be able to figure this out. (That's why they pretended during 2012 that the results were going to be unpredictable. And don't ever argue that against Joe Scarxxxxxxx.)

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Simply, polls can't predict turnout and the Democrats currently have an electoral college advantage.


Polling in 2012 showed a closer race between Romney and Obama among likely voters, but a bigger Obama lead amongst registered voters. The Obama coalition was/is formed by groups that often are troublesome when it comes to getting them to vote. So turnout was a big wildcard. Pollsters rationalized lower Dem turnout with a crap economy and sour national mood, and also failed to realize that a lot of Republicans (both centrist and TEA Party, ironically) began identifying themselves as Independents either out of anger (TEA bags) or embarrassment (moderates), but still voted Republican. So many pollsters underestimated Dem turnout and double-counted some Republicans, making Romney's surge look bigger than it was in October when all he was doing was gaining people who knew they weren't voting for Obama but weren't yet sold on Romney. But by the end of October, it was clear that Romney's surge had stalled and Obama was still in the lead.

Basically Obama would've won a smaller EV victory and (possibly) lost the popular vote at the same time had the LV polls become reality, but the surprise was that the Democratic base turned out and gave Obama a solid (but not huge) win.

[DS0816]

Simply, polls can't predict turnout and the Democrats currently have an electoral college advantage.


Polling in 2012 showed a closer race between Romney and Obama among likely voters, but a bigger Obama lead amongst registered voters. The Obama coalition was/is formed by groups that often are troublesome when it comes to getting them to vote. So turnout was a big wildcard. Pollsters rationalized lower Dem turnout with a crap economy and sour national mood, and also failed to realize that a lot of Republicans (both centrist and TEA Party, ironically) began identifying themselves as Independents either out of anger (TEA bags) or embarrassment (moderates), but still voted Republican. So many pollsters underestimated Dem turnout and double-counted some Republicans, making Romney's surge look bigger than it was in October when all he was doing was gaining people who knew they weren't voting for Obama but weren't yet sold on Romney. But by the end of October, it was clear that Romney's surge had stalled and Obama was still in the lead.

Basically Obama would've won a smaller EV victory and (possibly) lost the popular vote at the same time had the LV polls become reality, but the surprise was that the Democratic base turned out and gave Obama a solid (but not huge) win.

No.

It was math.

It was a "News Media" not wanting people to be able to figure this out for themselves.

The fact that Ohio was polling consistently as a Democratic hold didn't prompt any of the "News Media" to tell us that Ohio is a bellwether, in part, because it has come within 5 percentage points of the national margin in every election since its last streak kicked off back in 1964. (And that winning Republicans tend to carry Ohio above, while winning Democrats tend to carry Ohio below, the margin of the U.S. Popular Vote.)

The "News Media" wasn't telling us that, based on all states getting polled (not necessarily exit-polled), that Mitt Romney wasn't hitting the numbers he needed even in Republican base states like Texas and Georgia and Arizona and South Carolina and Alabama and Mississippi and….

The "News Media" doesn't want viewers informed. What "News Media" wants with presidential elections are the continuation of treating the red-and-blue coloring of the electoral map, as reported on Election Night, to be a colorful and suspenseful sports broadcast. (All you 40-state optimists: Get lost!)

[Liberalrocks]

New York

California

Same reason for Gore's lead in the popular vote in 2000.

[hopper]

I thought a few months before the election I thought Romney would win the popular vote but lose the electoral college. I think Romney's terrible performance with Hispanic Voters and his pull to hard to the right cost him White and maybe even Asian Moderates(see Loudon County, VA, Somerset County, NJ and Jefferson County, CO.)

[CountryClassSF]

Some of the national polls had Romney ahead or in a tie, but state polls showed consistent Obama leads in Ohio and Virginia, elsewhere.  It was a real possibility going into Election Day. But much of the polling, state and national, was skewed *in favor* of us.