Conservative Voters Will Re-Elect Obama (Or Not)
BY Glen Tschirgi
12 years, 10 months ago
According to this article by Nate Silver in The New York Times:
Among the Republicans that the polling firm classified as definite voters, Mr. Santorum’s lead was larger, 11 points over Mr. Romney. However, Mr. Romney led Mr. Santorum 33 to 22 among voters the pollsters classified as more marginal.
Ordinarily, a candidate should benefit from having the support of more definite voters — and most polling firms give them the bulk of the weight in their turnout models, which is why Mr. Santorum leads the poll over all.
The universe of indefinite voters is broader. But those votes don’t count for anything unless the candidate can get the voters to the polls.
That’s something Mr. Romney has had trouble doing so far. In states and counties that would appear to be strong for him, turnout is generally running below its 2008 pace. But in his weaker areas — say, most of the state of South Carolina — it has been steady or has improved some.
The discrepancy may help explain why Mr. Santorum has a larger lead, 15 points, in another poll of Michigan from Public Policy Polling. That firm projects Michigan’s electorate to be decidedly more conservative than it was in 2008. For instance, it projects 48 percent of the voters to be evangelical Christians, up from 39 percent in 2008, and 38 percent of voters to be “very conservative,” up from 24 percent.
One can debate whether these are realistic assumptions or not. The Republican electorate as a whole has become somewhat more conservative than in 2008, but the poll is projecting a more decisive shift.
Automated polling firms, like Public Policy Polling, often have low response rates, meaning that they tend to poll only the most enthusiastic supporters. At the same time, turnout in primaries and caucuses is normally quite low — so if a poll’s sample is biased in the direction of more enthusiastic voters, it may nevertheless have strong predictive power.
The thrust of the article is a warning to Mitt Romney to step up efforts to get more of “his people” to the polls in the upcoming primary contests. The big takeaway for me from this article is the bit about an increasingly conservative electorate. In Michigan of all places, too. While Mr. Silver downplays this forecast by the polling company, Public Policy Polling, it would go a long way to explaining the electoral tidal wave that occurred in November 2010, something that the Leftist Media seem curiously silent about these days.
If the electorate has made a “decisive shift” to conservative values since 2008, it will be quite difficult for Obama to win reelection. His election in 2008 was heavily dependent upon: 1) a significant backlash vote against George W. Bush and the Republicans in general; 2) a surge of voting by the college age demographic that traditionally has been quite small in past elections, and; 3) (the most significant factor in my opinion) a marked drop in turnout among conservative voters.
To distill this even further, the election of Obama resulted in large part from a fairly unique convergence of high disaffection with the outgoing President and that president’s party, a New Flavor Candidate that promised change and a moderate GOP candidate that could not stir conservatives to turn out and vote.
The first, two factors will be noticeably absent in 2012. Obama’s unvetted “Hope and Change” circus is well known now and he will be the focus of blame and dissatisfaction for all the ills of the last 4 years. The so-called Youth Vote is one of the groups suffering the most and unlikely to vote in anywhere near the numbers in 2008.
The last factor remains undecided and it is Obama’s last, best hope for reelection.
If Obama can secure high turnout from his Leftist base of voters (which amounts to approximately 20% of the voting population) and pick off another 25% of Independents that lean Left or Center Left, he only needs to discourage the conservative vote (which comes in at around 40% of the voting population according to Gallup). This calculation perfectly explains the policies of Obama in the last months. The XL Pipeline had to be canned to please his base. He could not afford to approve it. The stance on contraception funding in religious organizations was similarly intended to secure the base. Occupy Wall Street has been organized to stir up the Youth Vote if possible.
The final piece has been Obama’s strategy of bashing every GOP candidate that rises in the polls in the hopes of dispiriting conservatives and depressing their turnout in November. The Democrat Party and its allies in the media are in non-stop campaign mode to ensure that, no matter who the GOP nominates, conservatives will be dissatisfied and disillusioned. And the Republican Party has seemingly cooperated in that strategy by launching vicious attacks against each and every candidate, leaving a haze of discouragement.
Given the conservative shift in voting patterns cited by PPP in Nate Silver’s article, the fight over turnout by conservative voters may be the decisive battle of 2012.
On February 15, 2012 at 10:10 am, Rich Buckley said:
What if the a sufficient body of the electorate both right and left were to suddenly realize there seems to be no difference whatsoever between the two parties once in office. What if, people realize that regardless of the promises made during the campaigns, by either party, they both just carry out some overriding political Washington-hack and lobbyist welfare policy which both parties profess to detest?
What if, what the left originally saw in Obama has dried up and evaporated and is transferred over to a shared vision with populist elements for change in the right?
One of the surprising things about reform movements now taking place on both the right and left with the nonviolent elements of The Tea Party and nonviolent elements of The Occupy Movement, is the capacity to grow quickly, overpowering the media control of the status quo and igniting the electorate for change.
What if Judge Napolitano sees the coming reign of truth http://youtu.be/fOaCemmsnNk before it sinks into the rest of us?
What if we did form a government where we could fire it when it was unresponsive?
On February 15, 2012 at 1:31 pm, TS Alfabet said:
Rich, what are the “shared elements” between the Left and Right that you speak of?
On February 15, 2012 at 2:12 pm, Warbucks said:
TS,
These seem to each be three major areas where there exists sufficient overlap common to nonviolent elements on both sides:
(A) Currency reform, much like Ellen Brown: “return the privilege of creating the national money supply to the people”.
(B) Amending The Constitution to redefine Corporate Personhood.
(C) Clergy peaceful activism joining and reinforcing peaceful civil disobedience one city at a time.
On February 15, 2012 at 2:14 pm, Warbucks said:
Warbucks is Rich Buckley, sorry, each computer signs me in differently.
On February 16, 2012 at 7:28 am, TS Alfabet said:
Rich, from what I know of tea party movement folks, I don’t think there is much support for any of the three items you list. The tea partiers are not about populism like the Occupiers are. Tea party thinking is all about radically reducing the size and scope of the federal government and transferring power back to the states. It has no qualms with making a profit, or private enterprise or free markets. The currency issue may excite Ron Paul supporters but I would be surprised if it had much tea party support.
Sorry, but I think the Left and the Right in the U.S. come from irreconcilable views of reality, the world, the U.S. Constitution… you name it. The Left is disappointed in Obama seemingly because he hasn’t been radical enough. The Right dislikes Obama because he is far too radical Left. It is trying to make polar opposites meet.
On February 16, 2012 at 10:12 am, Rich Buckley said:
TS,
Reading the headlines of the controlled media one would logically come to your informed and respected opinion. What you say is the prevailing wisdom.
Yet work with some natural leaders of The Tea Party as well as some of the Spiritual leaders of the Occupy Movement (OWS) and blog almost daily on OWS and The Tea Party and my perception is the exists another politcal reality the finds left and right political support :
http://tinyurl.com/3fa94u8
http://tinyurl.com/7qh28pv
…. in both sides of the spectrum starting with currency reform. We create bogies for political partisan enhancement but when a particular reform provides answers to both sides, another energy begins to work. You can often gauge the strength of the so called “other energy” at work by how hard the prevailing dogmas of the existing dualities are presses by the mainstream. What happens, it seems, is the dualities crumble from below as the new shared vision takes over. The od belief is transformed into acceptable compromise to both. That appears to be what’s happening down here in my little viewing port. But I work emotionally on intuition like a woman, then switch hats over to the warrior, when I see a truth worth moving on. Like I’ve said before, my guys usually haven’t won in the past. So you are probably right with your knowledgeable and accurate main stream analysis.
On February 17, 2012 at 10:21 am, Rich Buckley said:
TS
More examples:
Late yesterday afternoon the Redwood City OWS Movement announced publicaly it was joining The SF Tea Party in jointly protesting the “rigged” and “contrived” managed community meetings being falsely presented as community input to fulfill UN Sponsored Agenda-21 protocols. Both groups left and right reject the inherent corruption seen in the artificialities of “community input”, none of which the people are ever given a local chance to vote upon.
Next I would expect to see NDAA legislation being jointly rejected by both left and right working together.
On February 24, 2012 at 11:20 am, TS Alfabet said:
@ Rich.
Food for thought on tea party core beliefs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGeZnPleG4k&feature=youtu.be
This is not to say that there might not be overlap as evidenced by the SF event you describe above, but the OWS people seem fundamentally in favor of a strong, central govt that exercises control over life and society.