Romney's Biggest Mistake

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Romney didn't have a biggest mistake. He made so many that it was death by a thousand paper cuts.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The problem is Romney like Hillary was badly damaged in the primaries especially by Newt Gingrich and the 20 debates.


To make up for that Romney should have done this


1. Choose Marco Rubio has his VP
2. Bring up the Reagan recovery more and compare it to the Obama recovery
3. Dont say the 47% comment
4. On immigration , remind people that Obama had a filibuster proof majority and didnt do anything, and his immigration policy is PRO LEGAL IMMIGRANT(which it was)
5. Put obama on the defensive

-How does that help him win Ohio, a state which is now (probably ludicrously) considered a solid Republican state by the denizens of Atlas?

To make up for his weaknesses, Romney shouldn't have bothered with his cutsey business conservative/Bushian message. He should have discarded it for the garbage it was. People saw him as an out-of-touch elitist. He should have brushed up on his populist cred.

Populist cred caused Trump to lose votes compared to Romney (compare Trump's 45.9% to Romney's 47.2%); he simply got lucky that Hillary declined from Obama as well. (Though Trump '16 compared to Obama '12 does do slightly better in the electoral vote; Trump gains Ohio and only drops NE-2). Romney's platform had more support from the voters than Trump's.

The problem with this analysis is that it fails to account for the third parties pulling votes away from both parties. Also, the EC switches don't make sense, since in Florida, Trump and Clinton both out performed Obama and Romney. Also there were a substantial number of Obama to Trump voters in PA and IA, so assuming that they flipped likewise, it is fairly likely that the 20,000 in PA and 22,000 in IA, that make up the rest of the difference between Obama 2012 and Trump 2016, would already be a part of Trump's 2,970,000 votes in PA and 800,000 in IA, thus flipping both states. Of course that is a hypothetical, but you are already comparing Trump 2016 to Obama 2012, so it is just extending that to states and in states such as those where the voting population is stable or declining, the game is vote flips.

2012
Barack H. Obama   Joseph R. Biden, Jr.   Democratic   65,918,507   51.01%   332   61.7%
Willard Mitt Romney    Paul Ryan          Republican   60,934,407   47.15%   206   38.3%

2016
Donald J. Trump   Michael R. Pence   Republican   62,985,106   45.94%   304   56.5%
Hillary Clinton            Tim Kaine          Democratic   65,853,625   48.03%   227   42.2%

Two Party %
2012: 52%-48%
2016: 51%-49%

Trump cut Romney's PV deficit in half almost.

Florida  Trump +500,000 over Romney
Romney 4,163,447
Trump 4,617,886

NC  Trump +100,000 over Romney
Romney 2,270,395
Trump 2,362,631

Ohio  Trump +200,000 over Romney
Romney 2,661,437
Trump 2,841,005

PA  Trump +300,000 over Romney
Romney 2,680,434
Trump 2,970,733

MI  Trump +150,000 over Romney
Romney 2,115,256
Trump 2,279,543

WI Romney +2,000 over Trump
Romney 1,407,966
Trump 1,405,284

IA  Trump +70,000 votes over Romney
Romney 730,617   
Trump 800,983

Trump lost votes compared to Romney in CA, TX, and GA. But not in New York:

NY  Trump +330,000 over Romney
Romney 2,490,496
Trump 2,819,534

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is no way for a Republican to win running Bush 2000/2004 style.

To win back upscale suburbs, they would have to abandon social conservatism wholesale. To win Trump style, you just have to tone it down or slightly alter the messaging.

Which do you think the GOP is going to nominate?

Immigration had next to nothing to do with Romney's loss, outside of maybe Florida. Ratchet up the Hispanic vote to 70% for Romney and he still loses the election.

The working class swing vote is what decides these elections.

In 2007, Romney criticized trade deals. In the 2011, he said illegal immigration hurts jobs and lowers wages. In 2013, he endorsed a $9 minimum wage.

Why didn't he make this case in Ohio August-October 2012? He had no problem saying it in a GOP primary or after the election.

Take a look at the Ohio map. Winning Republicans do better than pluralities in South central OH and 50s in NW Ohio. These are not "Working class Democrats". These are ancestrally Republican areas, at least NW Ohio is. Unlike South Central Kentucky, they are not going to just hand you 70% just for being there. Trump got 65% in those rural NW OH counties, 60% in South Central OH counties (that Romney couldn't get to 50%) and going back to NW OH, he flipped Ottawa, Wood and Sandusky counties.

You don't win those votes by peddling more tax cuts. Even the small business owners, while appreciative of low taxes/regulations, realize the main problem is that Ford shut down the auto plant and now there is no customer base.

That is why Trump won many of the same voters that Romney did in the Michigan Primary, while Cruz got some of Santorum's vote. Trump also got some of the Santorum vote and Kasich got the rest of Romney's.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He should have flooded the airwaves in the summer with a combination of positive spots about his record and negative caricatures of the president. Romney allowed Obama to define him early, which became very difficult to overcome.

I also think he should have pushed hard for Susana Martinez to be his running mate. Ryan didn't really offer very much in the end. If Romney had basically kept Martinez in Nevada, Colorado, and Florida speaking Spanish for three months (plus a few trips into Ohio and Iowa touting her gun ownership), she could have moved the needle.

That being said, the race was winnable for Romney until roughly the second debate. If Romney and Obama had given the same performances in Round Two that they gave in Round One, Mitt Romney would now be the president, easily on track for a second term.

I agree with this. I think Martinez would have helped him far more than Rubio and certainly far more than Ryan. She was not a part of Washington, had no votes or policies that would hurt in Florida and comes from a working class Democratic background and thus would have played well in the Midwest, despite not being from there. Now of course there might be stuff in the background that precluded her, be it something in New Mexico or some other kind of scandal.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He tried for The Midwest when he should've holed up Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.

If Romney had won Florida, he would have had 235. If he had won Virginia, he would have had 248 and if he had won Ohio, he would have 266.

He was four short of victory, even with his inside straight. He needed either Colorado, Pennsylvania or New Hampshire to win on top of that.

Trump basically conceded Virginia. He campaigned there a few times, but conceding VA and instead put more time into PA, which not only replaces the missing 13, it gets you 7 more on top of that which accounts for the missing 6 electoral votes that Romney needed. As I recall there were maps for Romney's campaign that didn't even include PA as a swing state. Trump and Romney also performed exactly the same in Bucks county, Trump did worse in Chester, but Trump did massively better in Lehigh and Lackawanna valley's (the traditional swing region that matches the Statewide result), Harrisburg Metro (Dauphin is now a Swing County), NW, West Central (That blob of post industrial rural counties between Pittsburgh and Penn State) and SW PA compared to Romney. Trump also did better in North Philly then Romney.

Trump also traded college educated whites in the sunbelt for working class whites in the rust belt, which flipped the electoral college skew away from the Democrats (which they gained by from moving CO, IA and NH so Democratic under Obama. Remember an even shift to a tie PV still had Obama winning the EC in 2012).

Romney's biggest mistake was not continuing the trade and immigration message he had in 2007 into the 2012 general election. He had already made his bed on immigration in the primaries in both campaigns, the notion that he could pivot away from that was a big error and the product of poor campaign consultants and pollsters who fed into a horrendous strategy. They bought into the narrative that African-American turnout would drop along with youth vote because of the economy and thus their models would suddenly became reality. They couldn't envision that the models were wrong and that the voters would show up on election day but not the polls. It is no accident that Trump likewise won on the backs of voters who don't show up well in polling data.

If you recall, in 2013 there was an article by Sean Trende in 2013 that talked about the missing White Working Class voters to the tune of almost 6 million in 2012. Trump got 2 million more votes than Romney, despite losing massive numbers of college educated whites. It is no accident that most of the states that trended or flipped to Trump were in that belt from Maine to New Mexico that Sean Trende talked about.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It is rather fitting for Adam to be the one to talk about it all coming down to having more finely tuned gears in the machine, but at the end of the people cast votes not machines and issues/culture/tribalism motivate voters.


A lot of people voted for Obama, but would have voted for someone else (even if said candidate didn't run that year). The fact this operation determined he had X supporters at a given time and turned them out to get 51% in 11/12 states downplays the process of how those voters got to that point.