Fun With Numbers

Folks who ought to know better stumble over the numbers behind Romney's defeat.

Times reporters Kevin Sack and Sarah Wheaton ponder the Republican coalition:

"Although the race was far closer than in 2008, Mr. Romney won two million fewer votes than Mr. McCain did against Mr. Obama that year. "

Count every vote! McCain's vote total *AS REPORTED* the day after the election was 56.9 million; by Nov 17 it had risen to 58.3 million and eventually settled at 59.9 million. Plenty of states take a while in counting all the votes.

The morning after the 2012 election Romney was credited with 57.4 million votes, exceeding McCain's initial total but trailing his final tally by 2.5 million. Less than a week later Romney's total has risen (at the Times) to 58.6 million, 1.3 million short of McCain's eventual total and ahead of McCain's interim total. (FWIW, CNN has Romney at 58,783,137 votes as of 11/12/2012 at high noon.)

The claim that Romney won "two million fewer" votes than McCain is already wrong; my guess is that Romney will eventually surpass McCain.

Maureen Dowd won't let reality interfere with her snark:

Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.

Mitt Romney is the president of white male America.

Maybe the group can retreat to a man cave in a Whiter House, with mahogany paneling, brown leather Chesterfields, a moose head over the fireplace, an elevator for the presidential limo, and one of those men’s club signs on the phone that reads: “Telephone Tips: ‘Just Left,’ 25 cents; ‘On His Way,’ 50 cents; ‘Not here,’ $1; ‘Who?’ $5.”

In its delusional death spiral, the white male patriarchy was so hard core, so redolent of country clubs and Cadillacs, it made little effort not to alienate women. The election had the largest gender gap in the history of the Gallup poll, with Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points.

Hmm. As to its target audience, I think Ann Romney ws meant to reassure women that a guy who didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't curse, had stayed married to his high school sweetheart and was a good husband, father and provider maybe wasn't such an awful guy.

And did it work? Well, among white women, Mitt had roughly the same gender gap as that macho swaggering Texas cowboy, George Bush, back in 2004 against every woman's fave, John Kerry. Bush was the president of white women by 55-44 but won white men by 62-37, a gender gap of 7 percent; Romney is the president of white women by 56-42 and white men by 62-35, a gender gap of 7 percent.

Where Romney falls apart is in his appeal to ethnic women. CNN does not subdivide it here, but shows Bush losing non-white women by 24-75. That is despite Bush picking up 44 percent of the Hispanic vote (men and women) and 11 percent of the black vote.

Romney lost Hispanic women by 23-76 and black women by 3-96; compounding his difficulties, each segment was a larger share of the 2012 electorate. Further compouding his woe - in 2004, Bush's gender gap among non-whites was roughly 7 percent, equal to his white gender gap. Romney's gender gap among blacks was 9 percent and among Hispanics, 10 percent.

My impression is that Romney had a serious ethnic problem, not an unusual gender problem. But nothing can stand between Maureen and her fun. Her final stat - Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points - is especially unconvincing. Romney is president of married women, by 53-46. Obama swept single women by 67-31. However, my *guess* is that single women skew more towards blacks, Hispanics and the 18-29 year old demographics than the married women, so what looks like gender based strength may be driven by ethnicity.

(I should note that Romney won each white demographic sorted by age, but his margin among 18-29 year old whites was only 51-44. Assuming a 6 point gender gap as with the overall white group, Romney would be roughly tied with Obama among young white (and disproportionately single) women.

Well. As an older white woman Maureen is a bit of an outlier. On the other hand, Catholic went for Bush in 2004 and Obama this time, so Ms. Dowde has a demographic home there. Not to mention her spot as a big city, highly paid east coast lib.

Comments

[LouP]

Want some hints about why Romney lost?

From Philly (similar results elsewhere):

In 59 Philadelphia voting divisions, Mitt Romney got zero votes.

Not a single one of them accidently voted for the wrong person. So you see, the voters in Philly are much more able to use the voting machines than those stupid Florida voters of 12 years ago. /snark

And the Dems know what got them there:

Axelrod's Next Project: Inspiring Young People to Become 'Journalists'

[Extraneus]

The family man schtick is a loser, Jimmy. We'll do better with a smouldering man of danger, who everyone suspects isn't sleeping with his wife.

"Put some ice on that."

[Extraneus]

Well, unless they nominate someone who wouldn't require that level of masculinity.

[Threadkiller]

Back to fun with numbers.

" The probability that the “birth certificate” and other Obama identity documents are genuine is just 1 in 75 sextillion."

http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/win-or-lose-obama-was-not-and-is-not-the-president/

1 in 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?

The odds of throwing 28 6-sided dice and them all having the same number is 1 in 6,140,942,214,460,000,256,224.

[Janet]

What do AlGore & Sandra Fluke's boyfriend have in common?

[Danube of Thought]

I think Lord Monckton needs a new sport.

I'd say the probability that Obama was and is the president is exactly 1.0.

[tommy mc donnell]

maureen dowd is a racist sexist.

[moxieman]

Mandates.

Makes for interesting reading, for those who don't move their lips when doing so, anyway.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/presidential-mandates

[Patrick Tyson]

Rick,

My best guess is that it'll be between 58% and 58.5% of 220 million.

My recollection from 2008 is that I even made a few spreadsheet adjustments based on the official results and I followed the count closely in the intervening months as, when it was complete, I posted a number of long comments at Nate Silver's pre-Times site on the performance of his model, of the pollsters and of the aggregators. I was something of a critic back then.

Regards.

[FeFe]

http://www.vdare.com/articles/slippery-six-mid-west-states-doom-romney-because-of-low-white-share
It took a couple of months of Michelle Malkin, myself and others pointing out that Edison’s celebrated report of Bush taking 44 percent of the Hispanic vote didn’t jibe with the actual votes before Edison finally retracted that guesstimate in early 2005. By then, it had become an apparently unkillable myth.

[FeFe]

http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-fulford-file-mitt-romney-was-an-immigration-wimp-dammit
But George W. Bush’s candidacy achieved, at most, 38 percent of the Hispanic vote. John McAmnesty achieved 31 percent. Romney got 28.3%.

[moxieman]

"Rasmussen explains:

"Our final daily presidential tracking poll showed Romney at 49% and Obama at 48%. Instead, the president got 50% of the vote and Romney 48%. We were disappointed that our final results were not as close to the final result as they had been in preceding elections. There was a similar pattern in the state polls. For example, in Ohio we projected a tie at 49% but the president reached 50% of the vote and the challenger got just 48%. Although every individual result in the battleground states was within the margin of error, the numbers we projected were consistently a bit more favorable for Romney than the actual results."

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The New York Times blogger called it right on the money. Bottom line: only the wilfully delusional will cite to Raz. NOT a reliable source.

[jorod]

If the Democrat supporters could read and write, they would know who passed those Jim Crow laws and who supported the institution of slavery. It's amazing how the dems have revised history.