Who were McCain’s and Romney’s bases?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Romney's national profile was built off border hawk positioning. In 2006 the dominant contenders for GOP were Rudy and McCain. Both had appeal to suburbs and both supported amnesty/comprehensive immigration reform.

Romney got in and essentially ran to their right on immigration and host of other issues. But it was immigration that allowed for his message to stick in spite of all the other weaknesses that his campaign had, it was one trump card he had, even against Huckabee who passed in state tuition benefits for illegals (Romney campaigned against magnets for illegal immigration and this was one such magnet).

Identity mattered a lot and it still does. Romney is a candidate tailor made for a narrow niche of voters, the kind that dominated Orange County, Pheonix/Denver/Las Vegas/Atlanta Suburbs. Rich, Reaganite Boomers, who were concerned about immigration from a mostly crime and demographic tension standpoint (Trump approaches it from an economic and demographic tensions standpoint). McCrory ran a very similar campaign to Romney's in NC in 2008, promising to crackdown hard on "crime, gangs and illegal aliens". McCrory way outperformed McCain in metro Charlotte area and especially the Charlotte suburbs.

Huckabee didn't really appeal to these more high end voters as he was more of a down market candidate who scared Romney supporters. They viewed him as a pro-life liberal who would spend like crazy and get away with it because he was "more pro-life". In terms of identity though, Huckabee comes across as one of the people in a place like rural Missouri or Georgia, while Romney "looked like the guy who comes to lay you off from your job" as Huckabee put it.

If you think about the Southern GOP as being divided between two groups:

1. Sort of a low country, high end fiscal conservative (many of whom tended to be more in favor of immigration and trade), and were more pro-war. These people are the political heirs and they themselves in some cases, the people who first went Republican in the South. Transplants, middle class professionals, military and ex-military, and while religious it wasn't to the exclusion of the other points. These are the heirs of the Thurmond voters in 1948.  

2.  Socially Conservative populists, who tended to favor pork barrelling politicians and were more populist on trade and later immigration issues, while also having an isolationist history. They derive from two places, ancestrally Republican mountain vote in places like Tennessee and also up country whites that had only joined the GOP post Clinton. This latter source created great angst for those in category one and Mark Sanford (most definitely from group 1), lamented the ex-Democrats who joined because of abortion and got elected to the legislature only to continue their big spending ways.

Huckabee was perfect for group number two and Huckabee criticized Bush for having a "bunker mentality" on Iraq, was accused of being a big spending "pro-life liberal" by Romney supporters and had raised taxes in Arkansas.

It is less well known, but McCain's family has deep south roots in Mississippi and thus was very strong with the low country group. McCain was very supportive of the military, fiscally conservative and against pork, while generally favoring reform and thus being at odds with the good ole boy system that was dominant in group 2.

Romney's narrow niche comes in between them appealing strongest to rich, Reaganist suburbanite boomers, who rather then seeing immigrants as welcomed housed hold servants and field workers, saw them as a threat to their political hegemony. They also viewed Huckabee as being too populist and McCain as too moderate, desiring sort of a goldilocks zone with someone who was more conservative on energy and immigration but still fiscally conservative unlike Huckabee. You see this divide strongly appear in Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee.








SC, though Romney wasn't a factor here.


The suburbs come down to a battle between McCain and Romney, while the rural areas were between McCain and Huckabee. Huckabee trailed way behind in the suburbs and Romney trailed way behind in the rural areas. Since McCain could compete in both areas, McCain ended up in a stronger position then either Romney or Huckabee and became nominee because of it.

It is worth noting that in 2011, Glenn Beck linked Huckabee and Trump together as being "big gov't" wolves in sheep's clothing and railed against both of them.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

McCain also dominated the suburbs of the NE, being the preferred candidate of choice for liberal Republicans, but it is worth noting some exceptions to this:  

New Hampshire:


Massachusetts



Michigan



MA map should look very familiar, you see the same pattern over and over again. Urban Boston+Berkshires versus The Boston Suburbs and Exurbs. Romney again did well with the latter group but he didn't do so well with the most liberal Republicans (McCain was their guy from 2000 and Romney wasn't really pushing for that vote) and he didn't do well with down market voters (looks like the guy who lays you off). You see the same dynamic in New Hampshire.

Michigan is fun to look at because the 2008, 2012, 2016 primaries all play out with the same basic divide geographically. McCain, Santorum and Cruz did well in the Western Part of the state and Grand Rapids, while on the other hand, Romney, Romney and Trump did well in Detroit metro. This is in spite of the differences between Romney and Trump's base being different in terms of wealth. There is a weird dynamic where primaries tend to become vehicles for existing patterns regardless of how neatly the candidates fit that region. In North Carolina 2014 Senate and President 2016, you saw the same pattern. Tillis and Trump did well in Charlotte metro, while Tillis opponent (forgot the name and Cruz) did well in RDU area. I think in both states this is driven by a so-con versus business dynamic. In Michigan you have Dutch Reformed in western part of state and in NC you have evangelicals.

Romney didn't play well at all in New York. It was very low turnout and McCain won every county, so I think that was machine politics at work. Rudy had endorsed McCain by that point and Al D'Amato's influence was basically he dead, he endorsed Thompson I think and Thompson had also endorsed McCain by the time New York voted (Super Tuesday).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

McCain's was moderates & independents, whereas Romney's was basically just middle- & upper-class Reagan conservatives & professionals in the suburbs.

Those were the groups that McCain and Romney targeted. But both failed.

In 2008, Obama won moderates 60-39%. (In comparison, Bush lost them by just 50-48%). Romney in 2012 didn’t win anything outside of the south and the Heartland, except Alaska? So I don’t think he won the Reagan Democrats and the professionals in the suburbs.

Romney did better in Orange , Tarrant , Cobb ,  Fairfax than McCain while he did worse than McCain in counties like Mahong, OH.


Romney did not do good in the industrial heartland at all and that was Obama’s firewall which kept Romney path to 270 extremely narrow

Romney was boxed in or I should say boxed out. He was limited in number of gains he could make, that is to say he had a ceiling placed on him in suburbs because of the social issues and how right he was pushed in the primary.

Meanwhile his image as "the guy who lays you off" and the restrictions placed on him by the donor class prevented him from expanding among more down market voters.

Romney did improve in suburbs but he did not win them or did not win them by enough to achieve victory.