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Nope. Not at all......
Wait, the turnout was what?! As the numbers continue to come into focus (and the final vote tally is still days or weeks away), the fact that Romney may underperform (or barely match) the listless McCain in 2008 is the real shocker of the election. Maybe we should have just run McCain/Palin again. Obama’s vote total will be down something like six to eight million from his 2008 total; it is unprecedented for a president to be re-elected without adding to his vote total from the first election. Hardly a vote of confidence.
The white vote, it turns out, was tepid. If the white vote had turned out to its potential, Romney wins and we wouldn’t need to go through the current hand-wringing about whether the GOP needs to seek amnesty from Latinos. What’s going on here? Keep two factoids in mind. First, according to exit polls Romney won white evangelicals by a four-to-one margin—as high or higher than George W. Bush in 2004. But second, recall Karl Rove’s theory after the 2000 election that Bush’s missing majority in that train-wreck election was the 3 million or so evangelicals who stayed home and didn’t vote, possibly because they were put off by the late DUI news about Bush. Finding and (successfully) turning out those voters became the key to Bush’s increased margin of victory in 2004.
It’s going to be a while before we know better whether the total potential evangelical vote didn’t turn out for Romney, and if not, why. Could it have been that many evangelicals couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Mormon, and simply stayed home? I distinctly recall polling data from back in 2008 that found as many as 20 percent of voters said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon (versus only about 1 or 2 percent for a black or a Jew), and I wondered whether those 20 percent were un- or anti-religious liberals who wouldn’t vote for a Republican in any case, or whether they were theologically conservative evangelicals who are uncomfortable with heterodox Mormon doctrine? I’ve had numerous conversations with serious evangelical friends over the last couple of years who all said of course I’ll vote for Romney because I can’t stand Obama, but they admitted having doubts about it. My self-selecting sample are mostly intellectual and politically-engaged evangelicals; what about the kind of evangelical that doesn’t like or follow politics closely? Keep in mind that a lot of evangelicals eschew politics as a this-worldly dominion best left alone: the City of Man versus City of God.
Sean Trende doesn’t think so. He thinks rural whites in Ohio just didn’t turn out. Neither does AllahPundit, who offers some exit poll numbers. But Charlie Martin thinks maybe so. And see David Mason in the Washington Post today:
Evangelical America has been flogging Mormonism as Satan’s own retail outlet for decades. But the suddenly ubiquitous appearances of the word cult on the eleven o’clock news and in ostensibly serious political conversations in the early primary days gave legitimacy on the national stage to the characterization of me as a glassy-eyed, reclusive loon from whom the neighborhood alley cats run in fear.
One thing for sure: the major media and establishment political analysts won’t touch this with a ten-foot pole.
Could it have been that many evangelicals couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Mormon,
I am so sick and tired of this question....This is the correct question.......COULD IT HAVE BEEN THAT MANY EVANGELICALS COULDN’T BRING THEMSELVES TO VOTE FOR A LYING SACK OF CRAP LIBERAL ROMNEY?????? It had nothing to do with Mormonism. I am neither Mormon or Evangelical.
That Obama did so poorly compared to 2008 is what makes this loss so much more depressing. Victory was clearly there for the taking, yet our side didn’t turn out to it’s potential, and we didn’t turn enough of Obama’s white voters who did actually vote.
Strangely I have talked to a number of religious black people who said they were not going to vote for president this time because they did not like either candidate. I'm not sure if there was a missing number of black voters or if they were just blowing smoke.
Did the presidential vote numbers come out the same as the other races?
If voting against Obama isn’t enough to get Evangelicals off their asses and to the polls, what is?
I say screw ‘em as a voting bloc.
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Nope. Not at all......
Evangelicals were a slightly larger part of the 2012 electorate than in 2008. The raw numbers were down, but that was true across the board in pretty much all subgroups.
Basically, the republicans said to conservatives, “Screw you. We don’t need your input. We don’t support your values. You embarrass us. Go away. We don’t need you to win.”
Since the republicans chose to run Romney, they have no one but themselves to blame for the loss.
Message to republicans, if you want conservative support, run a real conservative!
This is all in this Rino’s imagination. He does not even offer evangelical voting stats to base this rant upon.
When you run a progressive liberal against a progressive liberal, it might turn some people off. The GOP knew that when they ran Mittens. They knew Obamacare was based on Romneycare andthat Americans rejected Obamacare (a big economic issue).
It’s over for the two party system now. We have a socialist health care system that has total control over life and death. We have a police state/KGB rapidly coming of age and naming Americans their enemy. We have an open system of liberal racism. From the looks of Europe, political competitions are based on teams of disgusting elitists fighting to eat the white corpse of the West they slayed.
Well, it’s clear that when the evangelicals do vote, they vote strongly for conservatives. I realize that Free Republic is a conservative Catholic site, but maybe the bigger question is “What are the numbers for Catholic voters?”
ONLY one word can be used to express this situation..
DUUUUUUUUUUUGGH!.. (you buy them books they eat the pages)..
**note; I'm joining a party that don't have morons in charge of it..
Most of the Evangelicals are in states Romney won. Many voted for him.
Ohio vote total right here.
Democratic
Barack Obama
Joe Biden
2,691,861
50.18%
18
Republican
Mitt Romney
Paul Ryan
2,584,620
48.18%
0
Libertarian
Gary Johnson
Jim Gray
47,191
0.88%
0
Green
Jill Stein
Cheri Honkala
17,814
0.33%
0
Independent
Richard Duncan
12,099
0.23%
0
Totals
5,364,324
100.00%
18
Romney didn’t lose by much, so I doubt evangelicals were the real reason. Romney only lost by a little over 107,000 votes. Gary Johnson peeled off 47,000. Some more were peeled off with fraud.
I know someone who attends "The Cowboy Church" (a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention, IIRC)..
That person voted for Gary Johnson..
I was incredulous..A Baptist voting for legalized drugs and prostitution, pro choice..
Romney won white evangelicals by a four-to-one margin—
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Mormons voted for Willard by the same margin...about 4 to 1...
Those extra Mormons who didnt vote for Willard are obviously BIGOTS...
Hevk if even the Mormonbs think Willard is stinko...
why are you complaining about other religions ???
This Christian didnt vote for Willard either...
Me and the Mormons agree...
stranger things have happened...
Well, it’s not like we all haven’t threatened to not vote for the “lesser of evils” from time to time. Looks like a significant number of people finally followed through.
Mitt Romney wasn’t my ideal candidate either, but I voted for him. Not because I really thought he would - or could - stop our headlong rush into the abyss, merely that he might slow it down some and give me more time to make preparations. I’m going to have to adjust my plans back toward “worst case scenario.” Looks like I might still be trapped in Zombie Town when the balloon goes up. Too bad.
No, they couldn't vote for a pro-abortionist, which Romney is.
My opinion, for what it’s worth - somewhere in Cuyahoga county, OH; Somewhere in Miami-Dade county, FL; somewhere in several other liberal-controlled counties are piles of shredded ballots cast by people that chose Romney. I don’t think people stayed home in quite the numbers that they did when McCain ran.
McCain was extremely lame. Yes, Sarah helped him a good deal, but he was lame compared to Romney. Not that Mitt was the bastion of conservatism but compared to the commie punk that now occupies the White House, he’s Ronald Reagan!
That said, the election is over. Time to go on the offensive again. We moved the house big time in 2010. We know what the winning formula is, and it isn’t liberalism or liberalism-lite - it’s conservatism with an emphasis on fiscal control and freedom. That’s what it’s always been.
According to “How the Faithful Votes: 2012 Preliminary Analysis,” released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of white evangelicals voting in the presidential election bumped slightly upward, from 23 percent of all voters in 2008 to 24 percent in 2012. Of those, 79 percent voted for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, while 20 percent said they voted for President Obama. That’s roughly equal to the number of evangelicals who said they voted for George W. Bush in 2004, but more than former Sen. John McCain received in his presidential bid in 2008 (73 percent).
The Faith and Freedom Coalition, an organization in Duluth, Ga., dedicated to educating and mobilizing people of faith to be effective citizens, had slightly different numbers: Its polling data revealed that the evangelical vote increased to 27 percent this year, with 78 percent of them voting for Romney and 21 percent for Obama. http://www.citizenlink.com/2012/11/08/surveys-evangelical-electorate-vote-increases/