Obama’s Shrinking Majority

As August primaries and November general elections roll around look out here they come. Especially in the Black community the same ole political brigade will be out in the streets hitting the ground banging on doors in an attempt to preserve the same ole habitual habits of Black Voters. They will use the same old line on how "Our people died for you to have the right to vote" and then rumble off a few names. Blacks will receive in THEIR mail boxes THEIR own special campaign material which when sent out in THEIR zip code will have a potrait of the black candidate who is seeking to latch on to those "habitual habits". When the same is sent to the other side of town the potrait is missing. Someone is being played in the name of good politics.

Why would you expect a Black Politician to do at the National level in 3 years that Black Politicians across major cities hasn't been able to do at a local level for at least the last 40 years?

 

Obama’s shrinking Majority

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577518990180...

 

Elections are about numbers, and right now the president's are bad. To understand why, consider 2008 as a reference point. That year, Barack Obama received 69,456,897 votes to John McCain's 59,934,814.

But a big chunk of President Obama's 9.5 million-vote advantage is probably gone. Let's break this down. According to exit polls, 44.8 million Republicans showed up to vote in 2004 while only 41.4 million did in 2008. Almost all those 3.4 million Republicans who stayed home have been energized by Mr. Obama's agenda and are now eager to vote against him.

Gallup found in April that Republicans were five points more likely to vote than Democrats. More recent measures, including by the Pew Research Center in June, show Republican voters displaying more intense interest than Democrats. If 2008 stay-at-home Republicans vote, Mr. Obama's margin would shrink by more than one-third (to 6.1 million). Similarly, the 2.4 million veterans who voted in 2004 but did not in 2008 could turn out in 2012. Mr. McCain's winning margin among vets was 10 points.

 

Nor can Mr. Obama count on winning the support of 9% of Republicans—or roughly 3.7 million—as he did in 2008 (according to exit polls). If he instead wins the same 6% of Republicans as Sen. John Kerry did in 2004, then 1.25 million Obama Republicans would be subtracted from the president's column and added to Mr. Romney's. That would narrow Mr. Obama's popular-vote margin to 3.6 million.

 

According to the exit polls, Mr. Obama won independents by eight points in 2008 (52% vs. 44% for Mr. McCain). But the July 1 CNN/Opinion Research poll showed Mr. Romney winning independents by seven points, 49% to 42%. The June 24 Gallup poll found Mr. Romney up by one among independents, 43% to 42%. Independents will shift back and forth, but if they split 49% to 49% (with the rest going to minor candidates), then Mr. Obama's vote total would be shaved by 1.1 million and Mr. Romney's would grow by an equal amount, cutting the president's margin to 1.4 million.

 

Among voters age 65 years or older, Mr. Obama lagged behind Mr. McCain by eight points, 45% to 53%. That margin has doubled to 16 points (41% vs. 57%) in the July 1 CNN/Opinion Research. In the June 24 Gallup, the gap among seniors is 15 points, 39% to 54%. A big gap in November implies that Mr. Obama would lose some undetermined number of Democratic or independent seniors.

 

Mr. Obama also has a problem with middle-class voters. In the June 24 Gallup, he led among those making up to $36,000 a year by 51% to 39%, and he trailed among those making $36,000-$90,000 by 44% to 51%, both well behind his 2008 pace.

 

Finally, Mr. Obama faces real challenges in generating the turnout he needs from blacks, Hispanics and young people.

 

If the turnout of African American voters this fall is just a half-point less than in the last election, Mr. Obama would lose roughly 700,000 votes. With black unemployment at 14.4%, that's a real possibility.

 

Mr. Obama captured Hispanics by 67% to 31% in 2008. But the June 24 NBC/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll found Latino "interest in this election remains far below 2008 levels." Even after Mr. Obama's June 15 decree exempting young illegal immigrants from deportation, his approval rating among Hispanics is down to 58%. In the June 25 Gallup poll, four in 10 Hispanic voters list unemployment and economic growth as their greatest concern. This is no surprise, since Latino unemployment is 11%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

Another group vital to Mr. Obama's 2008 victory—young people—are now less enthusiastic about voting and about Mr. Obama. According to a June 24 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney among them by 23 points—11 points less than Mr. Obama's margin over Mr. McCain. If this holds up, it would cost Mr. Obama up to 1.25 million votes.

 

Still, Romney isn't home free. To win 270 Electoral College votes, he will have to keep Republicans energized, increase his support among independents, seniors and the middle class, and make inroads among Hispanics and young voters. To do that, he will need to do much more than just criticize Mr. Obama's many failures.

 

The closer Nov. 6 gets, the more pressure there will be on the GOP challenger to offer a principled, practical, detailed governing vision. He has many important policies on his website. He could cite them more consistently in his speeches and point voters to them in his campaign ads.

 

That doesn't mean rolling out everything right now. If Team Romney were to do that, the media will declare it old news by Labor Day. But to close the sale, Mr. Romney needs to be perceived on Election Day as the man with a plan.

Tags: Obama

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Permalink Reply by Thisis My Fullname on July 18, 2012 at 2:06am

You are referred to the bumper sticker in the 'shop' of Mittwit's official website:

http://store.mittromney.com/believe-in-america-bumper-sticker.html.

There you will see the legend:

     ROMNEY

     BELIEVE IN AMERICA.

With the least amount of cutting and pasting (I'm a confirmed computer illiterate, and I did it in Word), you can change this to

     RMONEY

     LET'S BUY BACK AMERICA.

    ....Offered to the public, without pretense of copyright or other recourse, legal or otherwise.  

     Right, I for one have never seen a presidential election that was so much about the lesser of two evils.  Or which, as such, was so momentous.  Compared to an orchestrated, slow-motion coup by disgruntled plutocrats, on a scale which would make our country the Marvel Comics parody of every stereotype of every 'banana republic' you care to name, Obama's failures (and, right, some of them are worthy of the term --as several of mine are) pale into relative insignificance.  

     I find it hard not to believe that this election is a referendum on America continuing to have a pretense of democracy, hanging by however thin a thread.  Precedents might be found in the history of the Roman Empire.  Right, you might have heard that before, but Watch.  In A. D. 193, after the death of Commodus (the  narcissistic, tyrannical son of a relatively competent emperor), the imperial office was literally auctioned off, by the military elite, to the higest bidder.  This is generally regarded as one of the earlier, but significant milestones in the decline ot the empire.  (I have an abridgement of Gibbon's Decline and Fall.  Cited for its relative absence of controversial content.  You could probably find the whole thing on Google Books.)  

     As I think Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure the Hell rhymes.

Permalink Reply by ALICIA BANKS on August 5, 2012 at 4:30pm

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