{"id":447505,"date":"2013-02-15T06:20:54","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T06:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/?p=447505"},"modified":"2019-08-16T06:25:50","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T06:25:50","slug":"november-2012-predictable-u-s-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/november-2012-predictable-u-s-election\/","title":{"rendered":"November 2012: A Predictable U.S. Election"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

The presentation\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNovember 2012: A Predictable Election\u201d, which dealt with the U.S. elections of 2012, was made on February 14, 2013 to the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) University Cincinnati, Blue Ash audience by Dr. Ionas Aurelian Rus, at that time Assistant Professor of Political Science, currently Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash.<\/em><\/p>\n

The opinion reflected in this piece does not necessarily represent the opinion of the editorial staff of Moldova.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

This talk is a follow-up to my October 23 pre-electoral analysis on the same subject. It was fairly easy to predict that Obama would win the presidency or rather that Romney would lose the election. Obama is the seventh U.S. president who won a majority of the popular vote twice. The number of states and electoral votes that Obama won was larger than expected, as were the Democratic gains in the Senate. The fact that the increase in the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives was only minimal was not surprising for me, probably because I had briefly looked at the polls for the races in all the House districts. On the basis of the various opinion polls, district by district and state-by-state, available at the website Real Clear Politics and in other sources, I predicted that the Republicans will get at least 226 to 231 House of Representatives seats, and they got 234. The most certain pattern to predict was the increase in the number of governorships held by the Republicans from 29 to 30, through a victory in North Carolina. My analysis will focus mostly on the presidential elections.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Obama largely won the elections 51.1% to 47.2%, predominantly on economic issues. Whereas the Consumer Confidence Index at the end of October 2008, right before Obama was elected the first time, was a 38, lower than ever since at least 1968, at the end of October 2012, it was a 72.2. While this was not great, it was a significant improvement. About 52% of the people thought, according to the ABC exit poll, that Obama would handle the economy better than Romney; only 44% thought the opposite.<\/p>\n

Obama definitely benefited from the weaknesses of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, who was widely seen as a wealthy plutocrat who, through his past role at Bain Capital, was perceived to have led to the \u201cexport\u201d of American jobs to other countries. Moreover, Romney had opposed the auto bailout, and his negative comments caught on tape about the poorer 47% of the population hurt him. Obama\u2019s success among working class whites, including those with a Reagan Democrat profile, in states such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin was helped by his campaign\u2019s successful populist use of these issues. Yet Romney had already been damaged by these kinds of problems due to attacks from his Republican opponents and even from the Obama campaign during the presidential nomination season earlier in 2012. The work of the Obama campaign was facilitated by the fact that, according to the ABC News exit poll, 55% of the voters thought that the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, and that only 39% believe that it is fair to everyone.<\/p>\n

The Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections, including the Republicans\u2019 newly acquired control of the House of Representatives, forced Obama to change his policies from center-left to centrist ones. Yet this helped him in 2012 with moderates and independents. According to the Fox News exit poll, Obama won 56% of the votes of the moderates, while Romney got only 41%. A more centrist Obama also did better among conservatives, with 17%, than Romney among liberals, with 11%. Whereas independents had been during most of the campaign predominantly pro-Romney, on Election Day, they were evenly divided, 50% to 50%, according to an exit poll. By contrast, the independents had gone for the Republicans during the 2010 midterm elections by 56 to 38 percent. About half of the votes that Obama and the Democrats had gotten in 2008, but lost in 2010, went back to the Democratic fold in 2012. The candidates of both major parties also attracted a larger percentage of their party\u2019s vote than in 2008. This reflects the greater and increasing partisan polarization during recent decades.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s victory in 2012 was more impressive than in 2008 among most racial minorities. To be sure, his support among African-Americans went down from 95% to 93% due to factors such as Obama\u2019s switch toward support for gay marriage. Nevertheless, blacks in battleground states, such as Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida supported Obama in greater numbers compared to 2008. Moreover, Obama\u2019s share of the Hispanic vote went up from 67% to 71%, and his share of the Asian-American vote went up from 62% to 73%. Something that might have helped were the Democratic calls for a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, but Obama\u2019s nomination of cabinet members from the minority groups, and of a Hispanic Supreme Court justice, also helped. Yet the fact that many Hispanics thought that Romney was anti-Hispanic should not be ignored.<\/p>\n

There were no surprises in the nationwide demographics of the vote. Romney\u2019s massive success among Tea Party supporters, Evangelical Christians and businesspeople did not guarantee his victory. Hurricane Sandy and New Jersey governor Chris Christie\u2019s endorsement of Obama\u2019s handling of the disaster did not explain Obama\u2019s nationwide victory. Yet they increased Obama\u2019s margin, and probably explain why he also carried Florida and Virginia, which had been in Romney\u2019s column before the storm. I did not predict this \u201cOctober Surprise\u201d on October 23. Moreover, the referendum on the legalization of marijuana in Colorado attracted to the polls more pro-legalization young voters, which also helped Obama.<\/p>\n

Something that did not make too much difference at election time was the debates. Romney clearly won the first debate held in Denver, which focused on domestic and economic policy. Romney was more comfortable and a better debater, while Obama seemed passive and without a \u201ctaste for the jugular\u201d. Romney briefly surpassed Obama in the polls. Obama\u2019s and Biden\u2019s victories in the later debates were less significant. Romney\u2019s \u201c47%\u201d remark behind closed doors, which came out in September, hurt him moderately. The later evolution of the polling numbers discussed previously suggests that the statement was not decisive.<\/p>\n

It was generally expected by the analysts who were acquainted with the polling data that the Democrats would retain control of the U.S. Senate and win more votes. They won by 54.3% to 42.2% in 33 races; 21 of them had previously been held by Democrats, and 2 by people who had caucused with them. The fact that the Democrats would win two extra seats was nevertheless not yet predictable in mid-October. Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts against a fairly popular incumbent, Scott Brown, partly because of her better debate performance. Brown overplayed his hand through excessive attacks against her claims that she was of partly Cherokee ancestry. Moreover, Massachusetts is a predominantly Democratic state. Angus King, a popular former independent governor of Maine, won because the national Democrats did not support the Democratic candidate, thus helping elect King, who, it was obvious, would caucus with the Democrats. The remarks about abortion in the case of rape of the Republican candidates in Missouri and Indiana helped with the election of Democrats in two Republican-leaning states that are predominantly anti-abortion and anti-moral laxity that voted for Romney for president. Those statements were widely seen not as anti-abortion, but as anti-women. The Democrats lost a Nebraska Senate seat in an open race in a predominantly Republican state.<\/p>\n

The retention of the Republican control in the House of Representatives in 2012 is partly explained by the gerrymandering in the redistricting after the 2010 federal census. The mostly Republican state legislatures changed the geographical boundaries of House districts mostly in favor of the candidates of that party. There were a few blatant cases, such as North Carolina, which was also conspicuous for past gerrymandering. The Democrats\u2019 victory in terms of popular votes, with 49.2%, equaled the 48% of the Republicans plus the 1.2% of the Libertarians, who are conservative on economic and budgetary issues, and liberal on foreign policy, social and moral issues. This might suggest that the country is predominantly liberal in foreign affairs, and on social and moral issues.<\/p>\n

The number of Republicans elected to the House declined by eight, from 242 to 234. Ten out of the sixteen Republican Representatives who lost to Democrats had been elected in 2010 from swing districts that typically voted for Bush Jr. twice and later for Obama. These typically Tea Party or more mainstream candidates were too much to the right of the average voters in these districts at a time when the Democrats formed a much larger percentage of the voters than in 2010. In four districts, the Democrats won because the Libertarian candidates took away enough votes from the Republican column.<\/p>\n

The Republican gains were mostly in the South, a common pattern in recent decades. By contrast, the Democrats\u2019 gains were conspicuous in solid Democratic states such as New York and Illinois, and in districts with many, sometimes mostly, Hispanic, especially Mexican-American, voters. Often the retirements of House members who were ideologically at odds with the predominant ideological trend in their districts helped the most common ideology assert itself.<\/p>\n

The results in Ohio were complex. Obama won the state\u2019s electoral votes because of factors such as the auto bailout, the tapping of blue-collar populist sentiment, and the lower unemployment rate than the national average. Both candidates won 93-94% of the votes of the people from their party, the highest degree of loyalty in almost seven decades. Sherrod Brown won the U.S. Senate elections because of good constituency service, and also for the same reasons why Obama won Ohio, and because the Democratic line on foreign policy is supported by most Ohio voters. Yet the Republicans obtained more votes for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio, and for the Ohio Senate, than the Democrats. The Democrats also had almost 11,000 more votes for the Ohio House of Representatives, which remained under Republican control. This would suggest that gerrymandering had an impact. The existence of split-ticket voting should also be noted.<\/p>\n

Predicting the future is not an easy task, but I will try it. Hillary Clinton is definitely the favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2016. She has the support of 57 to 61% of all the people planning to vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in the national opinion polls, and in the polls of all the states for which there is data. Bill Clinton\u2019s extensive and highly articulate support for Obama in 2012 might not have triggered Obama\u2019s future early endorsement of Hillary for 2016. But he would not endorse other candidates, such as vice president Joe Biden or New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who are also among the top contenders in the opinion polls, either. Yet will Hillary run?<\/p>\n

The situation in the Republican field is less clear. However, Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, is the apparent front-runner, with Paul Ryan second, Chris Christie third and Jeb Bush fourth. Chris Christie, the frontrunner for 2016 before the November 2012 elections in the opinion polls, is the only Republican candidate who has recently equaled any major Democratic candidate in a match-up for 2016. He is perhaps the only one who could win the elections of 2016 unless there will be a new recession. The Republican primary and caucus voters are clearly more conservative than the mostly, and increasingly, moderate Christie. Yet will he run? In retrospect, he might regret that he did not do so in 2012.<\/p>\n

The opinion polling data suggests that since the elections, the Democrats are doing even better in the generic Congressional ballot. It is difficult to foresee any significant changes in the 2014 midterm elections, even though the party that does not control the White House generally wins seats in midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The elections of 2012 were not so much won by the Democrats as lost by the Republicans. Their results were broadly predictable for those with a significant track record of electoral analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>The presentation\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNovember 2012: A Predictable Election\u201d, which dealt with the U.S. elections of 2012, was made on February 14, 2013 to the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) University Cincinnati, Blue Ash audience by Dr. Ionas Aurelian Rus, at that time Assistant Professor of Political Science, currently Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, Blue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":442588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"content_social_share":"Reading Time: <\/span> 7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

The presentation\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNovember 2012: A Predictable Election\u201d, which dealt with the U.S. elections of 2012, was made on February 14, 2013 to the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) University Cincinnati, Blue Ash audience by Dr. Ionas Aurelian Rus, at that time Assistant Professor of Political Science, currently Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash.<\/em><\/p>\n

The opinion reflected in this piece does not necessarily represent the opinion of the editorial staff of Moldova.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

This talk is a follow-up to my October 23 pre-electoral analysis on the same subject. It was fairly easy to predict that Obama would win the presidency or rather that Romney would lose the election. Obama is the seventh U.S. president who won a majority of the popular vote twice. The number of states and electoral votes that Obama won was larger than expected, as were the Democratic gains in the Senate. The fact that the increase in the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives was only minimal was not surprising for me, probably because I had briefly looked at the polls for the races in all the House districts. On the basis of the various opinion polls, district by district and state-by-state, available at the website Real Clear Politics and in other sources, I predicted that the Republicans will get at least 226 to 231 House of Representatives seats, and they got 234. The most certain pattern to predict was the increase in the number of governorships held by the Republicans from 29 to 30, through a victory in North Carolina. My analysis will focus mostly on the presidential elections.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Obama largely won the elections 51.1% to 47.2%, predominantly on economic issues. Whereas the Consumer Confidence Index at the end of October 2008, right before Obama was elected the first time, was a 38, lower than ever since at least 1968, at the end of October 2012, it was a 72.2. While this was not great, it was a significant improvement. About 52% of the people thought, according to the ABC exit poll, that Obama would handle the economy better than Romney; only 44% thought the opposite.<\/p>\n

Obama definitely benefited from the weaknesses of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, who was widely seen as a wealthy plutocrat who, through his past role at Bain Capital, was perceived to have led to the \u201cexport\u201d of American jobs to other countries. Moreover, Romney had opposed the auto bailout, and his negative comments caught on tape about the poorer 47% of the population hurt him. Obama\u2019s success among working class whites, including those with a Reagan Democrat profile, in states such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin was helped by his campaign\u2019s successful populist use of these issues. Yet Romney had already been damaged by these kinds of problems due to attacks from his Republican opponents and even from the Obama campaign during the presidential nomination season earlier in 2012. The work of the Obama campaign was facilitated by the fact that, according to the ABC News exit poll, 55% of the voters thought that the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, and that only 39% believe that it is fair to everyone.<\/p>\n

The Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections, including the Republicans\u2019 newly acquired control of the House of Representatives, forced Obama to change his policies from center-left to centrist ones. Yet this helped him in 2012 with moderates and independents. According to the Fox News exit poll, Obama won 56% of the votes of the moderates, while Romney got only 41%. A more centrist Obama also did better among conservatives, with 17%, than Romney among liberals, with 11%. Whereas independents had been during most of the campaign predominantly pro-Romney, on Election Day, they were evenly divided, 50% to 50%, according to an exit poll. By contrast, the independents had gone for the Republicans during the 2010 midterm elections by 56 to 38 percent. About half of the votes that Obama and the Democrats had gotten in 2008, but lost in 2010, went back to the Democratic fold in 2012. The candidates of both major parties also attracted a larger percentage of their party\u2019s vote than in 2008. This reflects the greater and increasing partisan polarization during recent decades.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s victory in 2012 was more impressive than in 2008 among most racial minorities. To be sure, his support among African-Americans went down from 95% to 93% due to factors such as Obama\u2019s switch toward support for gay marriage. Nevertheless, blacks in battleground states, such as Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida supported Obama in greater numbers compared to 2008. Moreover, Obama\u2019s share of the Hispanic vote went up from 67% to 71%, and his share of the Asian-American vote went up from 62% to 73%. Something that might have helped were the Democratic calls for a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, but Obama\u2019s nomination of cabinet members from the minority groups, and of a Hispanic Supreme Court justice, also helped. Yet the fact that many Hispanics thought that Romney was anti-Hispanic should not be ignored.<\/p>\n

There were no surprises in the nationwide demographics of the vote. Romney\u2019s massive success among Tea Party supporters, Evangelical Christians and businesspeople did not guarantee his victory. Hurricane Sandy and New Jersey governor Chris Christie\u2019s endorsement of Obama\u2019s handling of the disaster did not explain Obama\u2019s nationwide victory. Yet they increased Obama\u2019s margin, and probably explain why he also carried Florida and Virginia, which had been in Romney\u2019s column before the storm. I did not predict this \u201cOctober Surprise\u201d on October 23. Moreover, the referendum on the legalization of marijuana in Colorado attracted to the polls more pro-legalization young voters, which also helped Obama.<\/p>\n

Something that did not make too much difference at election time was the debates. Romney clearly won the first debate held in Denver, which focused on domestic and economic policy. Romney was more comfortable and a better debater, while Obama seemed passive and without a \u201ctaste for the jugular\u201d. Romney briefly surpassed Obama in the polls. Obama\u2019s and Biden\u2019s victories in the later debates were less significant. Romney\u2019s \u201c47%\u201d remark behind closed doors, which came out in September, hurt him moderately. The later evolution of the polling numbers discussed previously suggests that the statement was not decisive.<\/p>\n

It was generally expected by the analysts who were acquainted with the polling data that the Democrats would retain control of the U.S. Senate and win more votes. They won by 54.3% to 42.2% in 33 races; 21 of them had previously been held by Democrats, and 2 by people who had caucused with them. The fact that the Democrats would win two extra seats was nevertheless not yet predictable in mid-October. Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts against a fairly popular incumbent, Scott Brown, partly because of her better debate performance. Brown overplayed his hand through excessive attacks against her claims that she was of partly Cherokee ancestry. Moreover, Massachusetts is a predominantly Democratic state. Angus King, a popular former independent governor of Maine, won because the national Democrats did not support the Democratic candidate, thus helping elect King, who, it was obvious, would caucus with the Democrats. The remarks about abortion in the case of rape of the Republican candidates in Missouri and Indiana helped with the election of Democrats in two Republican-leaning states that are predominantly anti-abortion and anti-moral laxity that voted for Romney for president. Those statements were widely seen not as anti-abortion, but as anti-women. The Democrats lost a Nebraska Senate seat in an open race in a predominantly Republican state.<\/p>\n

The retention of the Republican control in the House of Representatives in 2012 is partly explained by the gerrymandering in the redistricting after the 2010 federal census. The mostly Republican state legislatures changed the geographical boundaries of House districts mostly in favor of the candidates of that party. There were a few blatant cases, such as North Carolina, which was also conspicuous for past gerrymandering. The Democrats\u2019 victory in terms of popular votes, with 49.2%, equaled the 48% of the Republicans plus the 1.2% of the Libertarians, who are conservative on economic and budgetary issues, and liberal on foreign policy, social and moral issues. This might suggest that the country is predominantly liberal in foreign affairs, and on social and moral issues.<\/p>\n

The number of Republicans elected to the House declined by eight, from 242 to 234. Ten out of the sixteen Republican Representatives who lost to Democrats had been elected in 2010 from swing districts that typically voted for Bush Jr. twice and later for Obama. These typically Tea Party or more mainstream candidates were too much to the right of the average voters in these districts at a time when the Democrats formed a much larger percentage of the voters than in 2010. In four districts, the Democrats won because the Libertarian candidates took away enough votes from the Republican column.<\/p>\n

The Republican gains were mostly in the South, a common pattern in recent decades. By contrast, the Democrats\u2019 gains were conspicuous in solid Democratic states such as New York and Illinois, and in districts with many, sometimes mostly, Hispanic, especially Mexican-American, voters. Often the retirements of House members who were ideologically at odds with the predominant ideological trend in their districts helped the most common ideology assert itself.<\/p>\n

The results in Ohio were complex. Obama won the state\u2019s electoral votes because of factors such as the auto bailout, the tapping of blue-collar populist sentiment, and the lower unemployment rate than the national average. Both candidates won 93-94% of the votes of the people from their party, the highest degree of loyalty in almost seven decades. Sherrod Brown won the U.S. Senate elections because of good constituency service, and also for the same reasons why Obama won Ohio, and because the Democratic line on foreign policy is supported by most Ohio voters. Yet the Republicans obtained more votes for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio, and for the Ohio Senate, than the Democrats. The Democrats also had almost 11,000 more votes for the Ohio House of Representatives, which remained under Republican control. This would suggest that gerrymandering had an impact. The existence of split-ticket voting should also be noted.<\/p>\n

Predicting the future is not an easy task, but I will try it. Hillary Clinton is definitely the favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2016. She has the support of 57 to 61% of all the people planning to vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in the national opinion polls, and in the polls of all the states for which there is data. Bill Clinton\u2019s extensive and highly articulate support for Obama in 2012 might not have triggered Obama\u2019s future early endorsement of Hillary for 2016. But he would not endorse other candidates, such as vice president Joe Biden or New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who are also among the top contenders in the opinion polls, either. Yet will Hillary run?<\/p>\n

The situation in the Republican field is less clear. However, Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, is the apparent front-runner, with Paul Ryan second, Chris Christie third and Jeb Bush fourth. Chris Christie, the frontrunner for 2016 before the November 2012 elections in the opinion polls, is the only Republican candidate who has recently equaled any major Democratic candidate in a match-up for 2016. He is perhaps the only one who could win the elections of 2016 unless there will be a new recession. The Republican primary and caucus voters are clearly more conservative than the mostly, and increasingly, moderate Christie. Yet will he run? In retrospect, he might regret that he did not do so in 2012.<\/p>\n

The opinion polling data suggests that since the elections, the Democrats are doing even better in the generic Congressional ballot. It is difficult to foresee any significant changes in the 2014 midterm elections, even though the party that does not control the White House generally wins seats in midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The elections of 2012 were not so much won by the Democrats as lost by the Republicans. Their results were broadly predictable for those with a significant track record of electoral analysis.<\/p>\n

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