November 7, 2012

The undying myth of Bush's 44% of the Hispanic vote

From the New York Times:
But not everyone was urging the party to run to the center. “No doubt the media will insist that Republicans must change, must sprint to the center, must embrace social liberalism, must accept that America is destined to play a less dominant role in the world,” Fred Barnes wrote on the blog of The Weekly Standard. “All that is hogwash, which is why Republicans are likely to reject it. Their ideology is not a problem.” 
“But there is also a hole in the Republican electorate,” he continued. “There aren’t enough Hispanics. As long as two-thirds of the growing Hispanic voting bloc lines up with Democrats, it will be increasingly difficult (though hardly impossible) for Republicans to win national elections. When George W. Bush won a narrow re-election in 2004, he got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. If Romney had managed that, he would have come closer to winning. He might even have won.”

No, the exit poll company later admitted the actual figure was more like 40%. And Bush and Rove had ginned up a housing bubble to get to that number.

November 6, 2012

Regional: Romney lost Electoral College in Great Lakes / North Central

Romney lost by moderate margins in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Among Great Lakes States, he won Indiana and lost by a lot in Illinois. 

Hispanics and Asians aren't all that important in this swing region: in terms of voters, it's basically pre-1965 white and black America. And Romney just didn't appeal enough on manufacturing and jobs in that part of the country. How does the 2009 Auto Bailout sound as the key to the Electoral College in 2012? Perhaps the anti-unionized government workers war in Wisconsin didn't work out so well for Republicans?

Gender Gap 8 points, but Marriage Gap 21 points

It appears that some massaging of the exit poll data is being done as the hours go by, perhaps to make it line up more with fairly close actual vote totals. In any case, here's the latest from NBC website, which has far more exit polls questions than CNN or some of the other sites. As usual, NBC has the Gender Gap as the 1st question displayed:

Gender

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Male455247
Female554453

while the Marriage Gap is the 62nd question:

Are you currently married?

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Yes425660
No623540

Gender by marital status

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Married men386029
Married women465331
Not married men564018
Not married women673123

Do you have any children under 18 living in your home?

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Yes514736
No504764

Married with children

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Married with children455427
All others534573

Parents

CategoryObamaRomney% Total
Men with children455316
Women with children564320
Men without children475030
Women without children544534

How Romney did relative to McCain in 2008

The Washington Post has a nice exit poll graphic showing how various demographic groups changed their vote from 2008 to 2012. 

Basically, Romney was up in most groups relative to McCain, just not enough. He was up 3 points from 55 to 58 in the huge white group, down 2 points among Hispanics. Most strikingly, he was down ten points among Asians, although that might be a sample size issue. "Other Race" trended 7 points for Republicans, although who knows what's going on there?

Men were up 4 points for the Republican candidate in 2012, women unchanged. Independents moved 5 points in the GOP's favor.

Married men were up 7 points for the GOP, but married women up only 2.

The Jewish vote went from 21% Republican to 30%.

Marriage Gap around 20 points or greater, more than double the gender gap

The marriage gap is always a low priority when news websites put up their exit polls. Everybody knows that's not an important gap, not like the colossal gender gap, so nobody pays attention to it, so next time, the marriage gap isn't give much play either, and so forth and so on forever and ever amen.

After checking a number of outlets, I finally found that the Washington Post has an elegant exit poll demographics page that does have the data.

Romney v. Obama
Married Men: 60 - 38
Married Women 53 - 46
Non-Married Men 40 - 56
Non-Married Women 30 - 68

From this, just guesstimating, until somebody puts up the exact numbers:

Marrieds (both sexes): 56 - 42
Singles (both sexes): 35 - 62

So the marriage gap is around 20 points, maybe higher.

In contrast, the famous gender gap was apparently about 9 points, or less than half of the marriage gap.

Obama's second term agenda of Amnesty: I say, Bring it on

Here's what Barack Obama told the Des Moines Register off the record about his second term agenda:
The second thing I’m confident we’ll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America. And so I am fairly confident that they’re going to have a deep interest in getting that done. And I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I've cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008.

On TV you will hear a large number of Republican talking heads saying the same thing. But, notice that you will hear 100% of Democrats saying that the Republicans have to do amnesty for their own good. Why are Democrats going out of their way to offer such good advice to Republicans? Because they love the Republicans and can't stand to see them lose elections.

Seriously, I say: Bring it on. Make immigration the first battle of 2013, the way Bush's partial privatization of Social Security got Bush's second term off to such a bad start.

National Exit Poll: Asians vote 74-25 for Obama

From CNN on the national exit poll:

Vote by Race
White: 72%
40%
58%
2%
African-Am: 13%
93%
6%
1%
Latino: 10%
69%
29%
2%
Asian: 3%
74%
25%
1%
Other: 2%
58%
38%
4%

You'll hear a lot of talk about how the Republicans would have won if only they'd welcome in more Hispanic immigrants, but get a load of the Asian vote!

National Exit Poll: Romney doesn't get enough white votes to close the deal

From CNN, national exit poll:
Vote by Race
  • White: 72%
  • 40%
  • 58%
  • African-american: 13%
  • 93%
  • Latino: 10%
  • 69%
  • 29%
  • Asian: 3%

Romney not carrying enough whites to win Wisconsin

Vote by Race
  • White: 86%
  • 47%
  • 51%
  • African-american: 7%
  • 94%
  • Latino: 4%

    Colorado exit poll: reverse gender gap due to men going 3rd Party


    From CNN's page on the exit poll in Colorado:

    Vote by Gender
    • Men: 49%
    • 48%
    • 47%
    • Women: 51%
    • 49%
    • 49%

    CNN has Obama winning electoral vote, Romney ahead in popular vote

    I would expect Obama to pull ahead in popular vote as West Coast comes in, but, we shall see.

    Exit poll demographics for Florida and Ohio

    Exit polls for individual states are being put up on CNN, so here's Florida, which Obama is leading slightly (a lead that has grown as the night has gone on, which bodes ill for Romney in the Electoral College).

    You'll notice that gender is usually first up, while marital status seldoms makes the first screen, which canalizes much of subsequent thinking about demographics of the vote.

    Here's Ohio's demographics, which the exit poll calls for Obama, although the actual vote count started with a big lead for Obama, which has been narrowing as the night goes on. Here's race in Ohio:


    Vote by Race
    • TOTAL
    • OBAMA
    • ROMNEY
    • OTHER / NA
    • White:79%
    • 42%
    • 57%
    • 1%
    • African-american:15%
    • 96%
    • 4%
    • N/A
    • Latino:3%
    • 56%
    • 40%
    • 4%
    • Asian:1%
    • N/A
    • N/A
    • N/A
    • Other:1%
    • N/A
    • N/A
    • N/A


    Hormonal politics

    From my new Taki's Magazine column:
    I’m writing my weekly column the evening before Election Day for you to read starting an hour after the polls close on the West Coast. As you may have noticed, I’ve strenuously avoided making any election predictions, and I’m definitely not going to start now. 
    So, let’s reflect instead upon the seldom-mentioned oddness of Barack Obama running for re-election as the Feminist Avenger obsessed with halting the Republican War on Women, when Obama is among the least feminist Democratic politicians out there.

    Read the whole thing there.

    Dave Weigel's exit poll analysis guide

    Anybody see any 2012 exit poll demographics yet? CNN usually has the best website, but I haven't seen it up.

    Dave Weigel writes in Slate:
    COLUMBUS, Ohio — As I head to Republican victory headquarters, here's the starter kit. 
    National exit polls from 2008. 
    National exit polls from 2004. 
    74 percent: The white proportion of the 2008 electorate. If it's higher this time, it's good for Romney. Sorry, folks, it just is. 
    31 percent: The proportion of the Hispanic vote that went to John McCain. If it's stuck there, or lower, for Romney, it's terrible news in Nevada, Colorado, and Virginia. 
    +7: The raw Democratic advantage in the 2008 election. In 2004 and 2010, there was no Democratic advantage—it was tied. If there's a Democratic advantage of 3 points or more, even considering all the moves voters have made and the regional party differences, it indicates an Obama comeback. 
    - 46 percent: The proportion that Barack Obama won of the white vote in Ohio last time. He can afford to drop to 43 percent, and still win, if nonwhite turnout is constant. 
    - 74 percent: The proportion of white "evangelical/born again" voters won by the McCain-Palin ticket, when they made up 26 percent of the total vote. These voters have never been asked to support a Mormon before. Mormon-baiting turned out to be the dog that didn't bark this year, but we have no great handle, yet, on this aspect of the vote, which will be crucial in the Rust Belt and Virginia.

    The 50-50 Principle exemplified

    The 50-50 Principle says that things that could go either way in the future are most exciting looking forward, but are the least informative looking back.

    Consider a huge example.

    Can you remember back 12 years? For 35 days, the biggest news story in the history of the world was the tie vote in Florida. Indeed, in terms of frenzied interest it seemed like a much bigger story than the rather ho-hum election campaign that had preceded. Why? Because it was a tie, and thus, for 35 suspenseful days, could have gone either way. Bush could have won or Gore could have won.

    On the other hand, even on a 2012 Election Day that might conceivably lead to something remotely similar, that whole five weeks seems intensely boring in retrospect. There were few large lessons to be learned, no vast new trends uncovered. There was just a tie.

    And even in terms of what few large lessons there were from the recounts, the Accepted Narrative mostly managed to avoid learning them. The heart of the story is that more people tried to vote for Gore than Bush, but more Democrats, especially black Democrats in the slums, tend to be screw-ups, so they screwed-up filling in their ballots more. But, you won't hear that, other than a comic reference to retired Jews of Palm Beach voting for Pat Buchanan.

    The 50-50 principle suggests that the events that seem most exciting in prospect tend to be the least important in terms of learning important lessons, and the realities that in retrospect ought to teach the most important lessons tend to be the most boring in prospect.

    I can now say I've proved the important of the 50-50 principle by repeatedly boring into near-catatonia on this topic even my highly indulgent readers.

    Election Open Thread

    Tell me about it.

    Neil Young

    Neil Young has an autobiography out, which I haven't read. I reviewed a massive biography of the rock star a decade ago for the first issue of The American Conservative (happy 10th anniversary), so I'll just repeat my diagnosis of the self-confident singer:
    The secret to Young's career longevity appears to be that his health has steadily improved with age. Today, the superior physical and mental constitution he inherited from his mother Rassy, a tomboy champion amateur golfer, and his sportswriter father Scott, hard-working author of 30 books, is no longer dragged down by the polio, epilepsy, and drug abuse of his younger years. He now lifts weights, works out aerobically, and plays a lot of golf. Of course, some might argue that after hoovering up all that cocaine before his second marriage in 1978, a naturally robust individual like Young sends the wrong message about the danger of drugs to the mediocre masses simply by not being dead by now.

    The biographer I read was still shaking his head over how Young had taken over Crosby, Stills, & Nash at the height of their popularity through sheer brass.

    In short, Young is by nature a jock. But, a sickly youth diverted him into the arts at a propitious moment (the mid-1960s), where he's gotten a lot accomplished, although perhaps more by masculine force of will than by supreme talent.

    Something nobody mentions about the election

    If Romney wins, he'd likely be renominated in 2016, when he will be 69, which isn't that young anymore. The Republicans had a lot of success with older candidates in the 1980s, but less since then: the elder Bush in 1992, Dole in 1996, McCain in 2008. Both Dole and McCain suffered terrible physical agony in their country's service (Dole almost died of his wounds several years after World War II), which doesn't help keep a man youthful-seeming. In contrast, Romney (like Obama) has enjoyed a physically comfortable life with no outside stresses.

    Here are a couple of general questions: How much correlation is there between the age somebody looks and their mental age? Romney looks much younger than 65, but how much can you judge a book by its cover?

    How much does the Mormon lifestyle of no smoking, no drinking, and no caffeine matter?

    By the way, the presumed frontrunner for the Democrats in 2016 is Hillary, who is about the same age as Romney. (Biden is even older.) The Democrats, however, have been more fad-driven and less likely to reward party warhorses who wait their turn.