Here’s only eight samplings of news articles on the subject of voters staying home. It ain’t stats, but it’s only eight of hundreds of articles published on the matter, so I think it was amply covered. Thanks for the discussion. Time for this old timer to hit the rack.
http://lonelyconservative.com/2012/11/three-million-republican-voters-stayed-home-on-election-day/
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333135/voters-who-stayed-home-andrew-c-McCarthy
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/11/08/why_did_three_million_republicans_stay_home
http://carnageandculture.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-voters-who-stayed-home.html
Had to run home and get my notes and calculations.
7 of your 8 links are for reports written within five days of the election.
The numbers they are using are wildly wrong.
One of them claims that McCain got 2.5 million more popular votes than Romney.
Wrong - Romney got 985,000 more popular votes than McCain.
Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online claims that the total popular vote in 2012 went down by 11 million votes.
Wrong - the total popular vote in 2012 went down 2.2 million.
Dick Morris waited one month to write his article.
He claims that 7 million white voters stayed home.
Not even close - 4.2 million white voters stayed home.
Bottom Line:
(1) In 2012, Obama lost 5.5 million white voters compared to 2008.
(2) In 2012, Romney gained 1.4 million white voters compared to McCain in 2008.
I used the Congressional certified vote totals from the Federal Election Commission.
I used the ethnic percentages determined by NEP, the exit polling organization that is used by every major news bureau in America.
If you want to see the basic math calculations and links I used, just ask.
Or, you can do the math yourself in less than 10 minutes.