Liberals who voted for Romney

[CadetCashBoi]

According to https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2012this 11% of self-identified liberals voted for Romney in 2012. Who were they?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Probably Southerners btw . Just look at this

https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/906560060557467649?lang=ar-x-fm


Look how low TX is to OK/AR/WV

[Don't Tread on Me]

Probably more than a few from Mass but other than that I'd say either some working class types who were fed up with Obama (this would become part of Trump's base) or some who are socially liberal/economically moderate but identify as liberal. The later would vote heavily Dem since 2016 unless it's for a moderate Rep.

[Raccoon]

Or liberal Mormons.... like yours truly at the time

[Mr.Phips]

I actually voted for him, even though I would consider myself “moderate”.

[Blow by blow, the passion dies]

Classical liberals

[Alben Barkley]

Probably Southerners btw . Just look at this

https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/906560060557467649?lang=ar-x-fm


Look how low TX is to OK/AR/WV

Honestly crazy that at least back then, KY, TN, and WV whites were so much more Democratic than TX and GA whites, and even more Democratic than NC whites -- a state Obama nearly won.

Also crazy how far off the white vote fell for Ds in a state like LA since Bill Clinton easily won it -- WTF was the cause of that exactly??? Why did it vote so far left of other Deep South states like MS and AL during the Clinton era, only to vote pretty much just like them afterwards?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Probably Southerners btw . Just look at this

https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/906560060557467649?lang=ar-x-fm


Look how low TX is to OK/AR/WV

Honestly crazy that at least back then, KY, TN, and WV whites were so much more Democratic than TX and GA whites, and even more Democratic than NC whites -- a state Obama nearly won.

Also crazy how far off the white vote fell for Ds in a state like LA since Bill Clinton easily won it -- WTF was the cause of that exactly??? Why did it vote so far left of other Deep South states like MS and AL during the Clinton era, only to vote pretty much just like them afterwards?

I’d say it’s a combination of three things :

1. The Bush years seemed to basically caused the a huge bloc of white southern voters to move hard to the Republicans and more so in the Deep South than any other place

2. The Katrina Effect

3. It being the Deep South, the racism effect as well 

[Alben Barkley]

Probably Southerners btw . Just look at this

https://twitter.com/noahpinion/status/906560060557467649?lang=ar-x-fm


Look how low TX is to OK/AR/WV

Honestly crazy that at least back then, KY, TN, and WV whites were so much more Democratic than TX and GA whites, and even more Democratic than NC whites -- a state Obama nearly won.

Also crazy how far off the white vote fell for Ds in a state like LA since Bill Clinton easily won it -- WTF was the cause of that exactly??? Why did it vote so far left of other Deep South states like MS and AL during the Clinton era, only to vote pretty much just like them afterwards?

I’d say it’s a combination of three things :

1. The Bush years seemed to basically caused the a huge bloc of white southern voters to move hard to the Republicans and more so in the Deep South than any other place

2. The Katrina Effect

3. It being the Deep South, the racism effect as well  

Yeah but other than the Katrina Effect, none of those are unique to Louisiana, which voted similarly to the other Deep South states before and after Clinton even before Katrina. Yet it was Clinton's best state in the South in 1996 aside from Arkansas and West Virginia, and clearly a LOT of whites voted for him based on the overall results and county map. It's always struck me as something of an anomaly that Clinton won it so decisively while still losing Mississippi and Alabama pretty handily. I can't believe it ALL comes down to him being from a bordering state, especially since AR also borders MS, and he generally did best in LA in the parts farthest from the AR border!

I doubt it's all James Carville either lol

[Pacific Republican]

Many liberals voted for Trump.  I'm a classical liberal and a Trump supporter.  So the same thing would have happened for Romney.

[TwinGeeks99]

Time travelers who were under the impression that if Romney won, it would have stopped Trump.

Serious answer: Probably socially liberal Mormons in Salt Lake City, or wealthy suburbanites who put their economic concerns before their social ones.

[Aurelius]

My parents.

[Orser67]

In 21st century exit polls, there have always been 10-20% of self-identified liberals who vote Republican, and 10-20% of self-identified conservatives who vote Democratic; even in 2008 (the most one-sided election this century) McCain won 10% of liberals. I've always wanted someone to do a deep dive on these two "crossover" groups.

People sometimes argue that self-identification in general is meaningless, but if that were the case then I don't think we'd see it line up quite so well with partisanship (and yes, I have seen that 538 article about the political positions of moderates). With that said, I do think that with respect to crossover voters specifically, a lot of them simply do "misclassify" themselves, inasmuch as they don't take "liberal" to mean someone who identifies with modern American liberalism as it is understood among those who obsess about, and/or work in, politics. I suspect many of the liberals who voted for Romney are self-identified liberal Republicans who use that term to mean that they are similar to Republicans like Charlie Baker or Olympia Snowe.

[Orser67]

Adding to my point above, here is how liberals have voted in the 21st century according to the Edison polls on Wikipedia:

Year: Democratic/Republican/Other
2000: 81/13/6
2004: 86/13/1
2008: 89/10/1
2012: 86/11/3
2016: 84/10/6
2020: 89/10

So Romney was basically average with self-identified liberals. One could argue that Bush was above average, but another way of looking at it is that U.S. politics was less ideologically sorted prior to 2008.