Texas Politics

Obama’s re-election signals changing electorate, sophisticated voter tracking


 

 

There’s a lot of post-election analysis going on since President Barack Obama’s sophisticated campaign surprised Mitt Romney and other Republicans with a stronger-than-expected victory.

Obama’s convincing win, in both the electoral vote (332-206) and the popular vote (by 3.9 million votes), confirms that in a time of changing demographics and views of the role of government, the President’s message and methodology are more convincing to more people than Romney’s.

The election also underlined that while the candidates were on ballots all across the country, the states really in play, and getting most of the attention, were just seven, according to respected election analyst Bill Schneider. They were Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, Schneider said.

That is in stark contrast to 1960, when 24 states – including Texas — had winning margins of less than 5 percent, Schneider says.

Among the tactics that helped the Obama campaign maximize its effectiveness was in-depth analysis of the TV viewing habits of people considered marginally likely to vote, according to Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times.

Rutenberg learned that the President’s campaign team found it could advertise more effectively with their own data rather than the standard commercial television advertising approach based on demographic data like age groupings. As a result, the Obama campaign told Rutenberg it bought ads on late-night programs like “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” ESPN, and even TV Land, a cable network featuring reruns of old TV programs.

Their effort was to try to reach less-political voters, who would be making up their minds about who to vote for, and whether to vote at all, closer to the election.

A by-product of the concentration on swing states by both major campaigns was that legislative majorities and governorships were more likely to go the way the non-swing states were expected to go in the presidential race.

The National Conference of State Legislatures found that 37 of the 50 states in 2013 will be under the unified control of one party – be it Democrat or Republican. That’s the largest number in 60 years, the NCSL reported.

Republicans will be in control in 24 states, including Texas. At least 13 states will be Democratic; New York was still sorting out some tight election districts.

That means that while President Obama will have to wrangle with divided government in Washington — Democrats marginally in charge in the U.S. Senate, and Republicans still with a majority in the House of Representatives — governors and legislators in those 37 states can have significantly more control.

For the Republicans, it can mean cutting taxes and expenditures on education and health care. Where Democrats are in control, they’ll be freer to increase spending on those items, even if it takes additional taxes.

Romney held on to the traditional Republican view of the last several decades, wrote David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, frequent TV and radio news talk show guest, and a thoughtful observer of American political sociology.

That view is the traditional frontier notion of individual responsibility — that government discourages innovation and breeds entitlement. Brooks said the percentage of people who agree with that view has shrunk.

He said growing Hispanic and Asian-American populations have an “awesome” work ethic, but “they are also tremendously appreciative of government. In survey after survey, they embrace the idea that some government programs can incite hard work, not undermine it; enhance opportunity, not crush it.”

When they look at barriers to their success, it’s often “a modern economy in which you can work more productively, but your wages still don’t rise. It’s a bloated financial sector that just sent the world into turmoil. It’s a university system that is indispensable but unaffordable. It’s chaotic neighborhoods that can’t be cured by withdrawing government programs,” Brooks wrote.

And the Obama campaign figured out not just how to reach those folks, but to get them to turn out and vote in the critical swing states to decide the election for Obama.

•••

There were 12 states where the victor got less than 53 percent of the vote. Obama won 11 of them, Romney 1 – North Carolina, with 50.6%.

The close states that Obama took, by these percentages:

Colorado – 51.2
Florida – 50.0
Iowa – 52.1
Minnesota – 52.8
Nevada – 52.3
New Hampshire – 52.2
New Mexico – 52.9
Ohio – 50.1
Pennsylvania – 52.0

•••
The Presidential Popular Vote
Obama-Biden (D) – 63,679,412 (50.73%)
Romney-Ryan (R) – 59,769,964 (47.61%)
Johnson-Gray (Lib.) – 1,236,280 (0.98%)
Stein-Honkala (Green) – 445,247 (0.35%)
Other (24 parties, plus write-ins) – 398,783
(0.32%)
DAVE McNEELY is political columnist. You may contact him at
davemcneely111@gmail.com or (c edd512)458-2963.


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