More election observations from my inbox:
I added points 12 - 16 [See Election Observations below for 1.-11.]
12. Jim Pinkerton points out that the Republicans have now lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections. Whatever is wrong with the Republican brand isn't new, and can't be explained away as a consequence of changing demographics. The Republicans did win the popular vote in 2004 with 9-11 echoing loudly. Of course, you can argue that the Republicans might have won the popular vote in 1992 without Perot in the race. However, the polling data from 1992 appears to show that Clinton got most of the Perot voters when he (Perot) left the race in July of 1992. Conversely, when Perot reentered the race in October of 1992, Clinton appear to have lost more support than Bush.
13. Some folks argue that Republicans can prevail by running more minority candidates. This theory was actually tested this year in Texas. Romney carried Texas 57.2% to 41.4%. Ted Cruz got 56.6% of the vote versus 40.5% for Sadler. I think it is wrong to suggest that Ted Cruz lost votes because he is Hispanic. However, it surely didn't gain him any votes. The obvious inference is that Rubio won't save the Republicans in 2016. They need to save themselves.
A reader points out that Cruz did a little better than Romney in heavily Hispanic South Texas and Romney did a little better than Cruz in white rural counties. Not a big effect, though.
As you know, the so called national exit poll didn't bother sampling enough people in Texas in 2012 to report demographics on that giant and fascinating state. Fortunately, my big upcoming VDARE.com article analyzing the election's demographics includes a brief analysis of Texas voting by ethnicity from an exit poll source that nobody else seems to have noticed.
14. Few people are mentioning it, but Citizens United was a big winner on Tuesday. Not the Citizens United won anything. Far from it. However, the failure of the outside spending organization to influence the outcome speaks louder than all of the dollars spent. Henceforth it will be rather hard for the Democrats to claim that Citizens United poisoned the electoral well for them. ...
Yeah, but, still ... Just because it will be hard for Democrats to complain doesn't mean the Democratic media won't have enough gumption to man up and whine incessantly each time some backwoods millionaire takes time off from buying cars for cornerbacks to donate one ... million... dollars to some Republican PAC.
However, somebody should try to estimate what percentage of all the money raised by pro-Republican groups was wasted or stolen via stupid ad buys, bad commercials, or get out the vote software that failed miserably.
My impression is that Democratic donors get a bigger bang for their buck right now. A Democrat giving a million bucks that goes to, say, walking around money in the 'hood in Philly is buying some serious results. In contrast, a Republican giving a million bucks will often wind up with some killer Powerpoint presentations, some fun team-building bonding experiences for the PAC staff after golf at Hilton Head, and then ... ?
15. Romney did much worse with Asians compared to any other group. He lost 9% of the Asian vote compared to McCain He lost the Asian vote by a larger margin 73% to 26% than the Hispanic vote. This raises some interesting (and disturbing) questions (for Republicans). Illegal immigration isn't the key topic in the Asian community, that it supposedly is among Hispanics. Romney and Republicans strongly embraced higher levels of skilled immigration (which means Asians in practice). Asians are not generally poor, welfare dependent, and family stability is high. Why then? At some level it would appear that Asians are voting like Jews ("Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans" is an old quip). However, this doesn't reveal as much as you might think. As late as 1996, Republicans captured a majority of the Asian vote. Starting with Bush 43, Republicans starting losing the Asian vote and are now losing the Asian vote by a margin of 47%.
I look into the Asian vote a little more in my upcoming VDARE.com article, using my second source that nobody else is looking at.
16. Overall, Obama's winning margin was smaller in 2012 (2.6%) than in 2008 (7.27%). However, the shift towards Romney was highly variable by state. In 47 jurisdictions, Romney closed the gap versus 2008 (winning some but not all of them). In 4 jurisdictions, the gap actually widened (AK, LA, MS,. NJ). Romney's greatest gain was in Utah (no surprise there). Romney's greatest loss (while still winning) was in Alaska. The other large shifts towards Romney were mostly in resource extraction states (IN 11.53%, KY 6.47%, MT 11.24%, ND 11.17%, WV 13.68%).
Heavily Latino states actually don't show any pattern at all. Romney gained share in AZ and CA, but less than the national average. NV and NM were above the national average. Texas was slightly below the national average. If Latino backlash was a major influence on the election, it would have presumably shown up in states with high Latino turnout. It didn't.
