President Obama Re-Elected - Page 1384

On November 08 2012 05:15 ragz_gt wrote:

This happened:
+ Show Spoiler +

On November 08 2012 05:12 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Well, a lot of government regulations (SOX, Dodd-Frank, ACA) either outright favor big business (Dodd-Frank and too big to fail) over small business or simply hurt small business more because of high compliance costs.

Some government programs, like the solar panel tax credit, also favor big business because smaller firms don't have enough profits to take advantage of all the credits. So they have to sell them to big firms at a discount.

On November 08 2012 05:23 xDaunt wrote:
Well, no point sugar-coating this. This was an ugly election for republicans for a lot of reasons. I also think that this election may be an inflection point for the country.

First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t state the obvious that I was dead wrong about the polls. Clearly they were right. I’m still shocked at how low the turnout was. If conservatives can’t get out of bed for this election, what will they get out of bed for?

This may surprise some of you, but I fall into the camp of “Obama won” as opposed to “Romney lost.” Was Romney a flawed candidate yes? Yes. Did he run a timid campaign? Yes. Did he leave a lot of issues on the table in exchange for a singular focus on the economy? Yes. Would a different campaign strategy have resulted in a win? No, I don’t think so. Voters had a lot of reasons to send Obama packing. All of the reasons were reasonably well-known (despite the media’s best attempts to hide them). Yet, the voters gave Obama another term despite it all. The ramifications of this are profound.

The obvious question to ask is where does the republican party go from here. Open division between moderate and conservative republicans is on the way. Each have arguments to make regarding who is to blame for this debacle. Each is also at least partially right. I’m not really prepared to comment any further on what republicans need to do to right the ship. I think that it is going to take some time to digest.

On November 08 2012 05:23 xDaunt wrote:
The obvious question to ask is where does the republican party go from here. Open division between moderate and conservative republicans is on the way. Each have arguments to make regarding who is to blame for this debacle. Each is also at least partially right. I’m not really prepared to comment any further on what republicans need to do to right the ship. I think that it is going to take some time to digest.

On November 08 2012 05:23 xDaunt wrote:
Well, no point sugar-coating this. This was an ugly election for republicans for a lot of reasons. I also think that this election may be an inflection point for the country.

First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t state the obvious that I was dead wrong about the polls. Clearly they were right. I’m still shocked at how low the turnout was. If conservatives can’t get out of bed for this election, what will they get out of bed for?

This may surprise some of you, but I fall into the camp of “Obama won” as opposed to “Romney lost.” Was Romney a flawed candidate yes? Yes. Did he run a timid campaign? Yes. Did he leave a lot of issues on the table in exchange for a singular focus on the economy? Yes. Would a different campaign strategy have resulted in a win? No, I don’t think so. Voters had a lot of reasons to send Obama packing. All of the reasons were reasonably well-known (despite the media’s best attempts to hide them). Yet, the voters gave Obama another term despite it all. The ramifications of this are profound.

The obvious question to ask is where does the republican party go from here. Open division between moderate and conservative republicans is on the way. Each have arguments to make regarding who is to blame for this debacle. Each is also at least partially right. I’m not really prepared to comment any further on what republicans need to do to right the ship. I think that it is going to take some time to digest.

On November 08 2012 05:27 Klondikebar wrote:


They need to ditch the fundie vote. They pandered to the religious right this time around and it wasn't enough. The gains from that ever shrinking portion of voters don't make up for the loss of basically every independent and even moderate republicans.

You're very right that making the economy the focus of his campaign was a terrible decision. In exit polls, the economy barely showed up as a deciding issue for people's votes. People just didn't care about it this time around.

Here is a state by state rundown of headsup results in % votes (positive numbers are Obama wins and negative numbers are Romney wins):
State, 2008, first count 2012
ME, 17.3, 15.5 (cautious not final)
VT, 37, 35.2
NY, 26.9. 26.8
MA, 25.8, 23.4
RI, 27.8, 27.9
CT, 22.4, 17.3
NJ 15.6, 16.9
DE, 24.9, 18.6
MD, 25.4, 24.2
DC, 86, 84.3
IL, 25.1, 16.2
MN, 10.3, 7.7
NM 15.1, 9.9
WA, 17.2, 12.4 (cautious not final)
OR, 16.4, 9.5 (cautious not final)
CA, 24, 20.5
HI, 45.3, 42.8

PA, 10.3, 5.1
NH, 9.6, 5.3
OH, 4.6, 1.9
MI, 16.4, 7.9
WI, 13.9, 6.7
IA, 9.3, 5.6
NV, 12.5, 6.6

CO, 9, 3.7
VA, 6.3, 3
NC, 0.3, -2.2

FL, 2.8, 0.6

MO, -0.1, -9.6
IN, 1.1, -10.5
AZ, -8.5, -11.6
WV, -13.1, -26.8
SC, -9, -11.3
GA, -5.2, -8
AL, -21.6, -22.3
TN, -15.8, -20.5
KY, -16.3, -22.7
MS, -13.2, -11.8
AR -19.8, -23.4
LA, -18.7, -17.2
ND, -8.7, -19.8
SD, -8.4, -18
NE, -14.9, -22.7
KS, -14.9, -22
OK, -31.3, -33.6
TX, -11.8, -15.8
MT, -2.2, -13.1 (cautious not final!)
WY, -32,3, -41.3
ID, -25.4, -31.9
UT, -28.2, -47.8
AK, -21.5, -13.5

The total electorals for Obama were
2008: 365 first count 2012: 332

A real battle was fought tonight. A few general trends:
- Obama lost voting share in all states but 5 (AK (no Palin), LA (?), MS (?), NJ (Sandy), RI (Sandy))
- The blue east-coast states were generally more blue, than the polls were showing before the election!
- The southeast was generally predicted to be closer than it was. They moved far red!
- With a few exceptions - MT where rural was lost clearly for Obama and SD where Sioux Falls spanked Obama - the bible belt was pretty well predicted by the polls!
- Arizona was expected to become closer, but instead it moved more into the safe red territory with Tucson and Phoenix making a good nodge towards red!
- Alaska was expected to be a far red state, but it was moving far more to the blue side without Palin to catch some cheap voters.
- The westcoast was seen as weakly/medium in favour of blue in polls, but they turned out to be far more solid blue (included NV where Las Vegas gave a big turnout and helped Obama carry it)!
- New Mexico was predicted well, while Colorado swung more blue than expected, with Denver carrying almost as much as last election!
- In the big blue north, it was pretty much as predicted, with a weaker blue win in Ohio where Columbia and Cleveland carried a strong weight and a clearer blue win in Iowa where a strong turnout in Des Moines helped Obama a lot!
- Florida was this elections big surprise. Carried by a clearer win in Miami and Tampa Bay than last election, it went blue, while it was expected to turn red!

From the general analysis it seems that the big cities belong very strongly to Obama, while the smaller cities were a lot more Romney-friendly this time around:
- In Wisconsin the biggest cities Milwauke and Madison gave clear wins to Obama, while he lost a solid lead from last election in Green Bay!
- In Michigan Obama won with about the same margin as last in Detroit, while Grand Rapids turned solid red!
- Portsmouth is a blue star in Oregon, while Salem was lost to the creeping red.
- In Georgie, Hotlanta is a shining sun of blue, while most of the rest is red. It is not inconcievable that Georgia can turn blue carried heavily by that area if Atlanta can keep its strong numbers up!
- In South Carolina Obama lost Charleston, while Columbia turned further blue, mostly because of a very bad turnout on both sides there.
- A state where Obama lost a lot was Missouri, where the turnout in Kansas and Saint Louis fell and the areas around them turned red.
- In Indiana, Indianapolis went further for Romney, the south in the state turned red and the north was a bit more Romneyfied than years before.
- In states where Obama did well, the big cities generally had fine turnout, while things went very red very fast where the city turnout fell and where the states were dominated by small towns or rural areas.The voters changing sides was a problem for Obama in smaller cities, where Romney got a good deal of extra support compared to McCain in 2008!

On November 08 2012 05:33 BluePanther wrote:



I'll be blunt: the moderates are the ones truly in charge. They are the ones that steer the boat. They've been steering to the conservatives for a while now since it gets the votes, but it seems they are doing more harm than help as of late. It's time we steer it in a different direction and let them flounder in the water if they don't like it. It's not like they're going to vote for a Democrat anyways.

On November 08 2012 05:35 JinDesu wrote:

A socially moderate conservative with a reasonable and transparent budget plan, who does not pander and flop, would possibly get my vote.

On November 08 2012 05:33 BluePanther wrote:



I'll be blunt: the moderates are the ones truly in charge. They are the ones that steer the boat. They've been steering to the conservatives for a while now since it gets the votes, but it seems they are doing more harm than help as of late. It's time we steer it in a different direction and let them flounder in the water if they don't like it. It's not like they're going to vote for a Democrat anyways.

On November 08 2012 05:20 BluePanther wrote:



Just piggybacking off of Johnnys comment, it's the same reason you have progressive income taxes instead of flat income taxes. The flatter the tax, the more disproportionally it hurts the poor. Fuel taxes for example are anti-poor taxes. Everyone buys the same amount of fuel. They pay the same tax. However, this tax is a larger proportion of the poor man's total income than the rich man's total income. It sounds fair, but in reality the poor man suffers a larger hit to his standard of living.

This same theory can be applied to businesses. Everyone can get credits, but the ability to absorb isn't there for all. Likewise, for compliance costs, pretend you have to implement the ACA at your workplace. You need to hire someone who understands it and can make sure you are doing everything right and monitor you workforce, etc. ACA experts cost 100k/yr salary, and assistants cost 50k/yr salary

Company A with 100 employees hires one person to do this at a cost of 100k a year.
Company B with 1,000 employees hires two people to do this at a cost of 150k a year.

It should be clear why ACA hurts small businesses and really isn't that big of a problem for larger companies.

On November 08 2012 05:36 Mohdoo wrote:
Anyone else having an absolute blast reading all the Republican bitterness on Facebook?

On November 08 2012 05:38 BluePanther wrote:


Conservatives aren't socially moderate. Republicans are. Conservatives are the wing-nuts who drag us down.

On November 08 2012 05:23 xDaunt wrote:
Well, no point sugar-coating this. This was an ugly election for republicans for a lot of reasons. I also think that this election may be an inflection point for the country.

First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t state the obvious that I was dead wrong about the polls. Clearly they were right. I’m still shocked at how low the turnout was. If conservatives can’t get out of bed for this election, what will they get out of bed for?

This may surprise some of you, but I fall into the camp of “Obama won” as opposed to “Romney lost.” Was Romney a flawed candidate yes? Yes. Did he run a timid campaign? Yes. Did he leave a lot of issues on the table in exchange for a singular focus on the economy? Yes. Would a different campaign strategy have resulted in a win? No, I don’t think so. Voters had a lot of reasons to send Obama packing. All of the reasons were reasonably well-known (despite the media’s best attempts to hide them). Yet, the voters gave Obama another term despite it all. The ramifications of this are profound.

The obvious question to ask is where does the republican party go from here. Open division between moderate and conservative republicans is on the way. Each have arguments to make regarding who is to blame for this debacle. Each is also at least partially right. I’m not really prepared to comment any further on what republicans need to do to right the ship. I think that it is going to take some time to digest.

On November 08 2012 05:05 BluePanther wrote:


And? My point is that the ones I picked wrong were well within the margin of error. I'm not sure why you're being so condescending? Even Silver was less than 80% on the three I got wrong (which, btw mr condescending, is within the generally accepted MoE).

I told you guys that I saw a model that had Romney down 2.3% in PA. He lost by 5%. Somehow that makes me anti-math? WTF, remind me to never tell you guys interesting information I think you might want to hear.