2012 Election Irregularities, Ironies, Oddities, and Anomalies (Part I)

What did we learn from the election data and exit polls:

• The media continually runs stories about minority vote suppression, especially when many states are moving to new voter ID laws. However, in 2012, the minority vote was up nearly 8% (Hispanics over 15%), while the White vote was down 7%. In fact, it was the highest turnout year for minorities who made up 28% of electorate and they voted Democratic at the highest rate ever in 2012 (80% to 20%).

• In a year where all media outlets and people pointed to more Republican excitement, Romney received fewer votes than McCain received in 2008. Heck, Romney received fewer votes in Ohio than McCain received in 2008 in arguably the biggest battleground state based on campaign spending.

• The Electorate favored Democrats by a 6% margin over Republicans. Meanwhile Gallup and other pollsters predicted the electorate makeup could favor Republicans. The question that begs to be answered is what happened to the White voters and the Republican base?

• Romney is the first presidential candidate in over a century to win the independent vote, but lose the election.

• Obama is the first President to win reelection with a smaller majority in either the Electoral College or popular vote. Obama did worse in both.

• This is the first time Republicans won a majority of House races while losing the Presidency. The electorate voted Republican 51%-48% for the House races, but 51%-48% for Obama (remember the electorate favored Democrats by 6%). This is equivalent to a 20 point swing in the independent vote (assuming Republican and Democrats voted similar to their presidential vote). For this to have happen independents would have had to break for Republicans by 2 to 1 margins. This is a larger margin than how the youth voted for Obama and almost as wide a margin as how Asians and Latinos voted for Obama. Yes, Republicans lost a few House seats but that was mainly due to favorable Democratic redistricting in California, Illinois, and Maryland that cost them 11 seats.

• Republicans still won a majority of house and senate seats in over half the states and gained 2 governor seats (31 governorships are owned by Republicans)

• Democrats did very well in Senate elections gaining two seats primarily because Republicans repudiated candidates in Indiana and Missouri (Murdock and Akin) for dumb remarks about rape, while Democrats overwhelmingly supported Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts who lied about her heritage and used affirmative action and diversity policy to better her education and professional life.

• The President and most Governor, House, and Senate incumbents won reelection despite congressional favorability at less than 15% and people thinking the country is on the wrong track by a 30% margin.

• Obama outperformed the average of 15 national polls by 2.5%. I concluded there was either an anomaly in national or state polls prior to the election because Obama could not win the popular vote narrowly and still win most of the battleground states as most polls prognosticated.

• Obama outperformed the average of dozens of state polls in 10 of 12 battleground states. Romney did better in one (Ohio), and one was tied (North Carolina).

• Romney won the White vote by 15%, but conveniently in battleground states with a high percentage of white votes, such as Iowa and Ohio, Romney’s advantage with white voters was nearly cut in half.

• In battleground states with high Democratic turnout (Democrats had a 6% advantage over Republicans nationally), Romney won the independent vote, but conveniently in battleground states with higher Republican turnout (Colorado and New Hampshire), the independent vote swung drastically in Obama’s favor.