[ishmac]

Interesting. I’m sure numbers from the various states will start coming out. And there’s no doubt that turnout on our side was down. That’s very unexpected and disappointing after 2010.

[buckalfa]

Yeah, 2010 was the perfect storm created by the the Tea Party in behalf of the GOPe. 2010 was an off year election where turnout is generally low creating a scenario where a relatively small number of motivated people can flip a congressional race. 2010 was an outlier that blinded many to the true political demographics of the nation. This caused many polls to be wrong and created a false hope that Romney could and would win. The final vote tally for 2012 will be closer to 2008 when all the results are in, so there will probably not be a huge difference in turnout between the two elections. I think the final chapter about this election will not be so much that republicans stayed home, but rather there is a significant change in the nation's demographics that is occurring and that Team Obama earned the victory by being better able to target sympathetic voters and physically getting them to vote. Unfortunately the GOP is old, white, and male, traits that one can longer build a winning election coalition around.