1 Did Romney pay for this study?

2 Sorry, still not buyin' what Mitt's sellin'.  And that's even if I believed the 'electability' argument actually favored him that much.

3 Oh, and primero!

4 I don't think Mutt will take NC and VA any better than Newt. In fact I think it will be the opposite.

5 CAC, your Gingrich map is much too optimistic.

GA, IN, MT, SC, both the Dakotas, and maybe AR will be in play under a Gingrich/Whoever ticket.

CO, NV, NH, MI, WI, IA, and (muahaha) PA will all be gone.

Things aren't looking too good in the "toss-ups" either.

6 Does this factor in the billion dollars worth of attack ads showing Romney sending jobs to China for profit?

7 Premature. 

8 Newt is a very polarizing person.. there are still lots of people who we need to vote who hate his guts - i.e. Indepedents and Moderates/Dems.

They will simply stay home.

Those same people will vote for Mitt, albeit while holding their noses.

That, of course, is my stupid opinion based on "feelings" and interpretations.. but it's nice to see that backed up in your maps, CAC.

9 Also, the idea that Maine, Conecticutt, Wisconsin, and Nevada will be in play with Romney is ludicrous. New Hampshire being solid red doubly so.

10

I think we should put all of our resources into Minnesota--because we didn't win it in 08, if we turn it Red, we'll win this thing. 

 

11 For every Romney independent or moderate vote he picks up, does he lose a conservative or Republican one? If Romney is the nominee, just wait until the media gets started on his religion's history of racism and the whole magic underwear stuff. It will make the stuff they pulled with Palin look like a pillow fight. There is a reason the mainstream has left Mitt alone. They can't wait to unload on him.

12 9 Also, the idea that Maine, Conecticutt, Wisconsin, and Nevada will be in play with Romney is ludicrous. New Hampshire being solid red doubly so.

No it isn't.  Romney, being from that region, is far better positioned to take advantage of Republican trends in New England states like NH and ME.  (CT may be possible with him, but I doubt it.)

NV is trending Democrat and WI is the ultimate toss-up state.  Romney can compete in both; a polarizer like Newt is certain to lose both.

13 11 For every Romney independent or moderate vote he picks up, does he lose a conservative or Republican one?

No.  In the end there will be far, far more independents and Democrats who won't vote for Gingrich before there will be any significant number of conservatives who won't vote for Romney.

Once the primaries are settled, conservatives WILL vote ABO.  That isn't the problem.

14

Let's see, based upon my military occupancy, I can vote in Virginia, Illinois, Alaska, and Kansas.  That's four votes for Romney/Gingrich/Perry/Stassen/Tebow/Can of Cling Peaches.  Are there really Repubs who will sit this out?  Against 1%bama?  That's cool, though, because Obama's victory assures us of an insurrection.        

15 For every Romney independent or moderate vote he picks up, does he lose a conservative or Republican one?

No.  In the end there will be far, far more independents and Democrats who won't vote for Gingrich before there will be any significant number of conservatives who won't vote for Romney.

Once the primaries are settled, conservatives WILL vote ABO.  That isn't the problem.

Posted by: The War Between the Undead States

............

Also - one other factor people usually leave out.. and it's an important one.

The Dems have a lot of disaffected voters this time around.  They will not get the same turnout that they did in 2008.

However, the more polarizing a figure the GOP puts up against Obama, the more it will fire up those voters to make it to the polls.

I cannot quantify that, of course, but I think a lot of those voters are less frightened of a Romney presidency than of a Gingrich presidency.

16 >>>For every Romney independent or moderate vote he picks up, does he lose a conservative or Republican one?

No.  Not even close.  And don't cite to "you," because you are the furthest thing imaginable from a typical "conservative."  You fall into the ultra-conservative, ultra-zealous, ultra-angry, ultra-engaged bag, which accounts for MAYBE 2% of the entire country.  Evem if every single one of you guys stayed home (which of course wouldn't happen), Romney would pick up four times as many voters to outweight that in the center-right, center, and center-left.

17 Is embiggen a word?  It sounds made up but I've seen it used on blogs more and more recently.

18 Embiggen comes from The Simpsons--I think it Jedediah Springfield uses it as a verb. 

19 Is embiggen a word?  It sounds made up but I've seen it used on blogs more and more recently.


It's perfectly cromulent.

20

Time Magazine – March 31, 1980

 

“National opinion polls continue to show Carter leading Reagan by an apparently comfortable margin of about 25%. They also show that more moderate Republicans like Ford would run better against the President. This suggests that Reagan is not the strongest G.O.P. choice for the November election and that he clearly faces an uphill battle.”

...

“Party operatives are plainly unhappy with his selection. In Massachusetts, where both Bush and Anderson defeated Reagan, party leaders are not yet reconciled to the Reagan candidacy. Says one: “There’s a vacuum of leadership at the national level; and what appears to be the Republican Party’s response? A 69-year-old man who has done virtually nothing for years”

... 

“Reagan has a history of committing rhetorical blunders that drive away voters. His quest in 1976 was damaged when he suggested vaguely, without proper research and consideration, that $90 billion in federal programs should be turned back to the states. He then spent months explaining that the affected programs would not be eliminated, only transferred. As Governor, Reagan was outraged by student unrest and once proclaimed: “The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”

... 

“Worse perhaps than the verbal gaffe is Reagan’s relentlessly simple-minded discussion of complex problems. He is aware that he is charged with this failing, and in his 1967 inaugural address on becoming Governor of California, he asserted: “We have been told there are no simple answers to complex problems. Well, the truth is there are simple answers, just not easy ones.”

21

I don't think I could stomach voting for Romney.  I could if I had to, vote for Gingrich.  But Romney has something about him that I can't stand.  Hair?  Cadence of his speech?  Initial reaction to him five years ago?  Not sure, but I am sure I do not care for the man.

22
  Who spread the blog out? You need to pack a lunch reading across.

23

McCain is ELECTABLE!

Dole is ELECTABLE!

Vote for the guy whose turn it is.

24 “Worse perhaps than the verbal gaffe is Reagan’s relentlessly simple-minded discussion of complex problems. He is aware that he is charged with this failing, and in his 1967 inaugural address on becoming Governor of California, he asserted: “We have been told there are no simple answers to complex problems. Well, the truth is there are simple answers, just not easy ones.”
Posted by: Perspective
.....................
What a bunch of Malarkey.. I was 28 yrs old back then.. I sure don't remember Reagan coming off simple-minded..

Watch this Reagan/Bush debate from 1980 and tell me he comes across as simple-minded.

http://tinyurl.com/bltj3f

25 The Dems have a lot of disaffected voters this time around. They will not get the same turnout that they did in 2008.
However, the more polarizing a figure the GOP puts up against Obama, the more it will fire up those voters to make it to the polls.

Exactly.  Turnout, particularly Dem turnout, is the key to understanding the differences between these two maps.

I really don't think conservative turnout is going to be a problem, no matter who we nominate.  We're going to have months and months after the nomination is sealed up to forget the primary wars and remember who Public Enemy #1 really is, and he's going to do enough shit over the course of the next year to make us more furious at him than we can even imagine right now.

But Democrat turnout is the reason Obama got where he is by the margin he did -- and, electorally, it's the reason he captured solid red states like NC and IN, and won tossup states in the Midwest and elsewhere by double-digit margins.  His best hope in '12 is for the GOP to nominate somebody about whom bad memories from little more than a decade ago already exist in the memories of nearly every Democrat and Independent out there, just waiting to be scratched and brought to the surface like a geyser of blood bubbling underneath an old, thin scab.

26

"No it isn't.  Romney, being from that region, is far better positioned to take advantage of Republican trends in New England states like NH and ME.  (CT may be possible with him, but I doubt it.)

NV is trending Democrat and WI is the ultimate toss-up state.  Romney can compete in both; a polarizer like Newt is certain to lose both."

What Republican trend are you talking about? The only visible trend is that New Hampshire and Maine are far more liberal than they used to be. And what is with the assumption that New Englanders vote based on identity politics?'

NV is unwinnable due to hispanics, which Romney has probably already turned off anyway. Wisconsin went to Obama by a 14 point margin. Give me a break.

27

McAsshole was electable in 2008 and was leading in the polls until the collapse of Lehman Bro's cratered the economy.  He handled the mess poorly, and Bush's abject failure as the leader of the Republican Party doomed the campaign and plunged the national into medieval darkness.

We can hold out for a major upheaval around election time in 2012 that reveals Obama to be the cosmic joke.  The gods of fate are cruel, but they have a wicked sense of humor. 

Or we can act--stop spending to the greatest extent possible...If you must spend, boycott firms based upon their political allegiance.  Stop hiring.  Get liberals fired.  Run cars with Obama stickers off the road.  Stop contributing to charities.  Tell your children not to enlist.  Register to vote in multiple locations.  Play for keeps!    

28 Posted by: Perspective at December 12, 2011 05:20 PM (spK8t)

Reagan won by a landslide 31 years ago because he was able to capture states that aren't in play for any Republican in 2012.

The electoral landslides of the past can't be replicated on a map in which Republicans are totally shut out of most of the largest states in the country (California, New York, Illinois) and many mid-sized ones (New Jersey and Washington, Michigan and Pennsylvania for over 20 years).

Reagan won all of those states.  He probably wouldn't if he were running today.

29 26,

You act as if 2010 never happened.  As if Republicans didnt win over 100 seats in the New Hampshire state House.  As if Sharron Angle was the only statewide candidate in NV (Brian Sandoval was elected easily the same day against Reid's son.  Difference is that he isn't a nutball).  As if Republicans didn't win control of all branches of government in Maine.  And most of all, as if nothing has happened in WI since 2008.  There might of been this guy Scott Walker, maybe you've heard of him.

I think ME is probably a bridge too far, but NH is in the bag if Romney's the nominee, and still very competitive for Gingrich.  NV has trended Dem somewhat in the past 5-10 years, but its a true swing state.

30 What Republican trend are you talking about? The only visible trend is that New Hampshire and Maine are far more liberal than they used to be.

The one that manifested last November, in which the GOP took back both House seats and control of both houses of the legislature by huge margins in New Hampshire; and in which it captured the governorship and control of both houses of the legislature in Maine for the first time since the '50s.  These states' electoral vote are ripe to be picked off next year.


NV is unwinnable due to hispanics, which Romney has probably already turned off anyway. Wisconsin went to Obama by a 14 point margin. Give me a break.

NV is very winnable.  Ask Governor Brian Sandoval (R), who is himself a Hispanic.  WI went to Obama by a double-digit margin for the same reason so many other states did:  Democrat turnout.  In normal presidential years it is a pure toss-up state.  Bush lost it both times by only a few thousand votes.

31

the only polls that matter happen on election day.

32

So, Romney, effete Yankee Moderate, does better at drawing out the White/Republican vote in Virgina and North Carolina than Newt, a Dixie lad from one state over?

Don't think so, Tim.

33 >>>So, Romney, effete Yankee Moderate, does better at drawing out the White/Republican vote in Virgina and North Carolina than Newt, a Dixie lad from one state over?

Erm, I hate to break this to you, but your model of the demographics of VA and NC are about a decade or so out of date.  VA's center of gravity now tilts much more heavily towards Northern Virginia and its affluent Federal government employees -- the folks who choose to live in Fairfax County because Montgomery County, MD (where I am) is too expensive, Prince George's is too corrupt (and downscale), and Maryland is a high-tax hell anyway no matter where you are.  This region used to be solidly moderate GOP (outside of Arlington Co., which might as well be Cambridge, MA), but now leans solidly Democratic, and the region as a whole contains the major plurality of voters. McDonnell shocked the state's politicos by winning Fairfax County outright in 2009, but he only took it by 51%.  Obama won it by something like 65% in 2008.  In order for a GOP candidate to win Virginia in the future, he's going to need to appeal to the remaining moderate GOP voters and independents in NoVA (of which there are a massive number -- tons of people who vote across party lines).  The Bush/Allen strategy of rolling up downstate (outside of Richmond and the Tidewater) and holding off the damage in NoVA is no longer operative, given the continued population shifts.  Just look again at the margin Obama took VA by -- it wasn't close.

With NC, it's a little different: Obama's margin was hairsplittingly thin, but again NC is becoming much more of a "Midatlantic" state in its profile (i.e. VA, MD, DE, NJ) than an Old Confederacy state with the massive influx of educated professionals into the Research Triangle area.  Those folks -- who prize competence over ideology and would gravitate naturally towards Romney -- are the ones who gave Obama his victory margin, alongside historic black turnout.

Either way, Gingrich utterly repels the voters who NOW make the winning margins in those states.  Romney attracts them.

34 As someone who is typing this from Old Town Alexandria, Jeff B. gets it right.  The "tobacco chewers" in Virginia don't run the state anymore.  I also add that there's been significant demographic change in NoVa in the past 20 years.  As late as 1988, Bush 41 got 45% in Arlington County.  McCain got 26% there and even McDonnell can't do any better than 33%.  As a rule of thumb, when you see high-rise apartments going up, you can see Republican vote percentages going down.

Fairfax is now a D+7 county on the national level because it is 40% non-white.  It is roughly 60% white, 10% black, 15% Hispanic, and 15% Asian.  McDonnell won Fairfax partly through strong exurban turnout, and also because he did rather well with the Asian and Hispanic populations.

The slippage among white suburbanites is somewhat less than the conventional wisdom says.  The change has much more to do with a less white population.  I do suspect that Romney would go over better in NoVa, though his immigration stance may interfere with that

35 Gotta say, maps like that make Romney look good in my eyes.  Not that devoted to any candidate, but devoted to kicking BO out of the WH.

36 How about one with 'Generic Republican'?

37 Wow i really found this to be an interesting read; thanks for sharing

38

Gingrich has been portrayed as a polarizing figure, even by supposedly GOP leaning news outlets, so it's not surprising that he trails Obama in the EV count in Dec 2011. I would like to see this map after the GOP convention, after millions of dollars in campaign spending, and after Gingrich has repeatedly spanked Obama's assin the debates. 

I'm still just a little confused as to why it is that the GOP establishment thinks that independents will turn out to vote for an increasingly open marxist President Obama, but not for an occasionally cranky Gingrich, especially after four years of Obama's mismanagement.

39
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41
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