Posted on 11/09/2012 4:58:17 PM PST by Iam1ru1-2
As the smoke clears from the wreckage of the Romney defeat on Tuesday, some intriguing yet disturbing facts are coming to light.
* Fewer people overall voted in 2012 (about 117 million) compared to 2008 (about 125 million).
* President Obama received some 6.6 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008 (60,217,329 in 2012 votes compared to 66,882,230 votes in 2008).
* One would think that such a dynamic would have helped Romney win — clearly it did not.
* Incredibly, Governor Romney received nearly 1 million fewer votes in 2012 than Sen. John McCain received in 2008. (In 2008, McCain won 58,343,671 votes. In 2012, Romney won only 57,486,044 votes.)
Why? How was it possible for Romney to do worse than McCain? It will take some time to sift through all of the data. But here is some of what we know from the 2012 election day exit polls:
The President received a whopping 71% of the Hispanic vote (which was 10% of the total votes cast), compared to only 27% for Romney (McCain got 31% of the Hispanic vote in 2008). Obama also won 56% of the moderate vote, which was interesting given that Romney (who got 41%) was widely perceived by the GOP base as being a “Massachusetts moderate.” The President lost married women (getting only 46% of their vote to Romney’s 53%). But won decisively among unmarried women (67% to Romney’s 31%).
That said, what I’m looking at most closely is the Christian vote, and here is where I see trouble:
42% of the Protestant Christian vote went for Obama in 2012. This was down from 45% in 2008. 57% of the Protestant Christian vote went for Romney in 2012. This was up from 54% that McCain won in 2008. When you zoom in a bit, you find that 21% of self-identified, white, born-again, evangelical Christians voted for President Obama in 2012.
You’d think this decrease in evangelical votes for Obama would have helped win the race for Romney, but it didn’t. 78% of evangelical Christians voted for Romney in 2012. Yes, this was up from the 74% that McCain received in 2008, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
To put it more precisely, about 5 million fewer evangelicals voted for Obama in 2012 than in 2008. Meanwhile, some 4.7 million more evangelicals voted for Romney than voted for McCain. Yet Romney still couldn’t win.
Meanwhile, 50% of the Catholic vote went for Obama in 2012. This was down from the 54% that Obama won in 2008. 48% of the Catholic vote went for Romney in 2012. This was up from the 45% that McCain won in 2008. Yet it still wasn’t enough.
Now consider this additional data:
In 2008, white, born-again, evangelical Christians represented 26% of the total vote for president, according to the exit polls.
In 2012, white, born-again, evangelical Christians represented 26% of the total vote for president, according to the exit polls.
In other words, we saw no change at all in the size of the evangelical vote, –no net gain, certainly no surge, no record evangelical turnout, despite expectations of this.
Of the 117 million people who voted on Tuesday, therefore, about 30 million (26%) were evangelicals. Of this, 21% — or about 6.4 million evangelicals — voted for Obama.
By comparison, of the 125 million people who voted in 2008, 32.5 million (26%) were evangelicals. At the time, Obama won 24% of evangelicals, or about 7.8 million people.
What’s more, in 2008, 27% of the total vote for president was Catholic, according to the exit polls. In 2012, only 25% of the total vote for president was Catholic.
Remarkably, this means that Romney got a higher percentage of the Catholic vote than McCain, but millions of fewer Catholics actually voted in 2012, despite having Rep. Paul Ryan, a practicing Catholic, on the ticket.
What does all this mean? A few observations:
During the GOP primaries in 2012, it was reported that there was record turnout by evangelical voters — they were fired up and mobilized then (though largely behind Sen. Rick Santorum.)
There were concerns by a number of Christian leaders going into the 2012 elections that Romney’s Mormonism might suppress evangelical and conservative voter turnout.
The Romney campaign worked hard to not only to win the evangelical vote but to turn out more evangelicals to the polls — but it did not work.
Despite Obama’s pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-religious freedom record — a record presumably abhorrent both to evangelicals and conservative Catholics — Romney simply was not able to cut deeply enough into Obama’s evangelical and Catholic vote.
If Romney had been able win over significantly more evangelicals – and/or dramatically increased evangelical turnout in the right states – he would have won the election handily.
It is stunning to think that more than 6 million self-described evangelical Christians would vote for a President who supports abortion on demand; supported the same-sex marriage ballot initiatives that successed in Maryland, Maine and Washington; and was on the cover of Newsweek as America’s “first gay president.” Did these self-professed believers surrender their Biblical convictions in the voting booth, or did they never really have deep Biblical convictions on the critical issues to begin with?
Whatever their reasons, these so-called evangelicals doomed Romney and a number of down-ballot candidates for the House and Senate.
This is what happens when the Church is weak and fails to disciple believers to turn Biblical faith into action. Given the enormous number of evangelical Christians in the U.S., this bloc could still affect enormous positive change for their issues if they were to unify and vote for the pro-life, pro-marriage candidate as a bloc.
What will it take to educate, register and mobilize Christians to vote on the basis of Biblical principles, and what kind of candidates could best mobilize them?
This is a critical question that Christian political leaders as well as pastors must serious consider. As we have seen, just a few million more evangelicals voting for pro-life, pro-marriage candidates could offset other demographics that are becoming more liberal.
That said, we need national candidates who take values issues as seriously as economic and fiscal issues, and have strong credentials on these values issues, and can talk about these issues in a winsome, compassionate, effective manner.
We need pastors registering voters in their churches and teaching the people in their congregations the importance of the civic duty of voting.
None of this should come, however, at the expense of pastors and other Christian leaders clearly, boldly and unequivocally teaching and preaching the Word, proclaiming the Gospel, and making disciples, and helping believers learn to live out their faith in a real and practical way in their communities, including being “salt” and “light” to preserve what is good in society. What we need most in America isn’t a political revival but a sweeping series of spiritual revivals — a Third Great Awakening. As men and women’s hearts are transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they will, in time, vote for the values they are internalizing from the Bible. As I wrote about in Implosion, if we don’t see a Third Great Awakening soon, I’m not convinced we will be able to turn this dear nation around in time.
So how exactly did Romney “ignore” you?
Ooooffff.....wait’ll they get wind of this thread. 3...2...1......
They disgust me, those sick bigots. And as one caller stated to Rush yesterday, “ this is what needed to be done”.
Oh, really? Obama back for another 4 years is a GOOD THING? Idiot bigots. You are responsible for the coming apocalypse.
You can’t really be a Christian and vote for obama. Simple as that
Yeah, well according to the exit polls the so-called “Evangelical base” likes to ride both sides of the fence, and votes Obama by the millions.
Meanwhile, the GOP alienates millions of other potential voters who find fiscal conservatism appealing, but don’t really like the hardline SoCon rhetoric.
The human mind is crazy....Abortion, infanticide, gay marriage and a Christian can vote for that? It does make reason stare.
Here we go again - Obama 2.0 is the Christians’ fault. Brilliant.
What crap.
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Total crap. But desperate people have to find someone to blame. And the list is endless: Christie, Libertarians, Birthers, Dems who stole 5-10 million of our votes, Christians, Dick Morris and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
OK, maybe I made that last one up. But can anyone take a breath and think clearly for one moment. And maybe blame the GOP who conspiired to give us Mittens?
Soros invested in far-left disinformation media and they are having fun using almost every issue to lie and divide conservatives.
From Mark Foley to Bush's DUI to the so-called "weepy Boehner" they are having a field day as conservatives drink the koolaid almost every time and turn against their leaders.
Hey enough of that hardline SoCon rhetoric.
Yeah, well according to the exit polls the so-called “Evangelical base” likes to ride both sides of the fence, and votes Obama by the millions.
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Can you read? The percent of Evangelicals for Romney is 80%. That is NOT riding both sides of the fence. No other demographic came anywhere NEAR as close in supporting the Mormon.
But hey... Go ahead and bash Christians if it makes you feel better. Blame us, mmm-kay? That’s what liberals do.
‘Self-described’ evangelicals...says it all.
You are correct sir. As an Evangelical Christian, I believe if these people voted for Obozo, they do not know the Lord, or they do not know the issues, and if they do not know the issues, they need to get their heads out of the sand.
Go back and read post 15. I gave you 3 examples.
Bingo.
Nielson showed a decline in electoral night viewers (2008 and 2012) by about 6 million. That seems to be in line with the overall decline in votes for the 2012 election.
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It will be interesting to see the analyses of the Senate losses. It wasn’t that long ago that it appeared the GOP would win several seats that ended up staying or moving to the Dem column.
Where those Obama coattails?
We know the IN and MO losses were due to the GOP candidates’ mouths.
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It would also be interesting to find out why Rove, Morris, Barone, and several of the ‘conservative’ talkshow hosts were so completely wrong about their projections.
This time, it seemed that most of the polling organizations were very accurate.
They claim to know Jesus,then they go and vote for an antichrist.Go figure.
True. The word "evangelical" has come to be meaningless in that many theological liberals freely use it. Theological liberalism inevitably leads to political liberalism. The term "evangelical" technically means: "one who tells the good news". It's easy to see how both liberals and conservatives could find ways to argue they are doing just that.
And then there are those bible conservative Christians who will say that voting for a guy who is for the working man does not mean that you believe his other policies. That is real common among multi-generational democratic families.
I would bet the house that the 6 million self described Evangelicals who voted for Obama also look a lot like Obama. Race trumps all.
Jesus wants to know why you voted for a baby killer!?!
Uh...right.
Truth is...Romney directly addressed the concerns of his base when he ran for President. He appointed almost as conservative a VP as possible to allay those concerns and as candidate for President voiced support for conservative positions.
His fiscal policies were excellent and his debate performances were so stellar he even won the vote of one of his most outspoken critics, the owner of this forum. But you can never please everyone and the back-seat drivers will always, always be there.
and a bunch of Mormons also...
about 1 in 4 of those who voted in this election...
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