Présidentielle américaine/2012: C’était bien la participation, imbécile ! (Romney even got fewer votes than McCain)

En 2012, la participation frôle les 80 %, ce qui est important. Si elle est de 4 points inférieure à celle de 2007, elle est très supérieure à ce que les instituts de sondage prévoyaient : un effondrement proche de 10 points ! A mon sens, on doit y voir la très forte mobilisation de la gauche dans son rejet du sarkozysme. L’autre manifestation de cette colère à l’égard du président sortant s’est traduite par une plus faible participation des villes où Nicolas Sarkozy avait fait le plein en 2007. Typiquement, le retraité qui a voté pour le candidat UMP, il y a cinq ans, s’est abstenu au premier tour cette fois-ci. Ce qui laisse une certaine marge de progression pour le convaincre de se déplacer au second tour. En revanche, François Hollande semble ne disposer que de peu de réserve parmi les abstentionnistes du premier tour. (…)  Si l’on met l’accent sur sa deuxième place, on pourrait conclure à un échec par rapport aux présidents sortants tous arrivés en tête. Seulement, en 2002, Jacques Chirac, dont le bilan est jugé comme inexistant, a certes respecté la règle en s’offrant la première marche du podium, mais en ne captant que moins de 20% des voix. Aussi dire que la stratégie Buisson, ou plutôt Buisson-Guaino a échoué, est-il, à mon sens une erreur d’analyse. Christophe Guilluy

Dans de nombreux milieux académiques, artistiques et éduqués, il est impossible d’afficher son soutien éventuel à Nicolas Sarkozy, tellement l’antisarkozysme y est explicitement hurlé, ce qui évidemment empêche toute discussion entre amis. On se doit d’y adhérer par le silence. Il suffirait que lors des prochains jours, un petit pourcent de ces personnes retranchées dans leur civilité « osent » leur opinion, et se mettent à débattre pour contribuer à ce petit fléchissement d’inflexibles qui, toujours d’après les équations, provoquerait un effet de levier brutal et soudain, amenant le jour de l’élection la victoire surprise de Nicolas Sarkozy comme illustré sur la figure où seule une différence de 1% d’inflexibles différencie les deux courbes ci-dessous.

Les « inflexibles », ceux qui ont fait un choix et n’en démordront pas quoi qu’il arrive (…) ont un effet démultiplicateur énorme sur la dynamique de changements d’opinion des flexibles. Ainsi, ce ne sont pas des millions d’électeurs qu’il faut convaincre, mais former une petite minorité d’inflexibles, qui par le simple fait du débat entre amis, va produire par un effet viral la « contamination » d’un grand nombre d’électeurs flexibles. Ces inflexibles ne se forment pas par un coup de baguette magique, mais en l’occurrence de nombreux inflexibles favorables à Nicolas Sarkozy sont aujourd’hui silencieux. C’est leurs paroles locales qu’il s’agit de libérer pour Nicolas Sarkozy. Comme pour François Hollande, l’enjeu est au contraire de les maintenir silencieux. Serge Galam

Au-delà du phénomène traditionnel de non-révélation des préférences, deux paramètres peuvent échapper aux enquêtes des sondeurs. D’abord les reports très fluctuants et dispersés d’un institut à l’autre, rappelons-le, reposent sur une participation inconnue au second tour. Or, on ignore aujourd’hui quel camp a le plus de réserves. Par ailleurs, les participants du premier tour ne sont jamais tout à fait les mêmes qu’au second tour, même si la participation reste en apparence constante. Enfin, les instituts insistent sur la mauvaise qualité (postulée) des reports à droite et fort peu sur celle des reports à gauche. Or, la grande inconnue réside dans le comportement des électeurs du front de gauche dont l’électorat dépasse largement les contours du seul parti communiste, qui de son côté, est généralement discipliné. (…) Si les « vrais » votes du 6 mai sont influencés par un ou plusieurs des paramètres précédents, l’écart entre F. Hollande et de N. Sarkozy pourrait être beaucoup plus serré qu’attendu par les instituts de sondages voire même réserver un énorme surprise …du point de vue des commentateurs…mais pas du point de vue de l’arithmétique électorale et de l’observation empirique. Bruno Jérôme et Véronique Jérôme-Speziari

According to exit polls, the partisan breakdown on Election Day was 38 percent Democratic, 30 percent Republican, and 31 percent independent. That gave Democrats an 8-point advantage — the same they enjoyed in 2008. (In 2004, Republicans had a 5-point advantage in the Buckeye state.) NRO

The increased share of the minority vote as a percent of the total vote is not the result of a large increase in minorities in the numerator, it is a function of many fewer whites in the denominator. So who were these whites and why did they stay home? My first instinct was that they might be conservative evangelicals turned off by Romney’s Mormonism or moderate past. But the decline didn’t seem to be concentrated in Southern states with high evangelical populations. So instead, I looked at my current home state of Ohio, which has counted almost all of its votes (absentees are counted first here). (…) Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years. My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challenger’s failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters’ fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the “47 percent” gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home. (…) Had Latino and African-American voters turned out in massive numbers, we might really be talking about a realignment of sorts, although we would have to see if the Democrats could sustain it with someone other than Obama atop the ticket (they could not do so in 2010). As it stands, the bigger puzzle for figuring out the path of American politics is who these non-voters are, why they stayed home, and whether they might be reactivated in 2016 (by either party). Sean Trende

C’était bien la participation, imbécile !

Moins de voix que McCain en 2008? Moins de voix que Bush en 2004? Obama à 92% de ses voix de 2008?

Alors qu’un peu comme en France il y a cinq mois et avec le même résultat, certains observateurs dont le spécialiste républicain Karl Rove lui-même pensaient que les chiffres des sondeurs sureprésentaient les démocrates en s’appuyant sur les chiffres de participation particulièrement élevés de 2008 censés être nettement en baisse cette année face à des électeurs républicains supposés nettement plus motivés …

Retour sur les premiers chiffres de sortie des urnes …

Et la plus que surprenante réaité: la participation a effectivement compté mais pas dans le sens anticipé:

Les Républicains semblant être largement restés chez eux, privant de fait leur candidat d’une victoire théoriquement à sa portée  …

Alright… so… what happened?

The AnarchAngel

November 7, 2012

So how did Obama win?

Well.. as it happens, so did Romney.

Get less votes than McCain that is… About 3 million less actually.

In fact, Romney lost to Obama, by fewer votes (about 2.6 million) than the difference between McCain and Romney from 2008 to 2012.

If Romney had achieved the same number of votes McCain did in 2008, he probably would have won.

It really did come down to turnout… But not in the way we expected.

Those of us who believed that Romney was going to win, assumed that that while almost no-one actually loved Romney… or even particularly liked the idea of him as president; that those voters dislike of Obama would cause them to vote for Romney, to get Obama out of office.

They didn’t.

Instead, they just didn’t vote.

Polls showed a large independent break for Romney. up to 20%

But the turnout models were wrong, and the likely voter models were wrong. Romney only ended up with a 5% advantage among independents.

Those 15% ?

They just decided not to vote.

In fact, not only did both Romney AND Obama get less votes than 2008… they also both got less than their counterparts in 2004.

Absolute turnout hasn’t been this low since 2000, when the country had 35 million fewer people in it.

As a percentage, turnout hasn’t been this bad since 1948.

Yes, seriously, we haven’t had turnout this bad in 64 years.

So, where did Romney lose support from McCain?

Actually, in most demographic categories, Romney gained support over McCain as a percentage… But in a few critical groups, he lost substantially:

Fiscal conservatives (more than 10% loss)

Libertarians (more than 20% loss)

Latinos (Romney lost 6%, Obama gained 3%, 3% less voted)

Asians (Romney lost 9%, Obama gained 11%, 2% more voted)

The elderly (Romney lost 3%, Obama picked up 1%, 2% less voted)

He also lost HUGE on “shares my values” (over 10%), and “cares about people like me” (over 6%).

Basically, Romney was successfully portrayed as an uncaring and detached rich guy to “centrists” and “independents”; and he actually IS a big government Republican, which other independents, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians didn’t want to vote for.

The Republican party (and most everyone else for that matter) simply assumed that by choosing Romney as their nominee, people would vote for him as the lesser of two evils…

They didn’t.

Instead, they just didn’t vote.

What were we tellling ourselves in the runup to the election: Oh, that’s right, that for a lot of voters, the choice was either Romney or not voting at all. Apparently, though, back in the real world, voters thought the choice was either Obama or not voting at all.

Voir aussi:

Turnout Shaping Up to Be Lower Than 2008

Josh Lederman

November 7, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — A drop in voter turnout in Tuesday’s election didn’t keep President Barack Obama from winning a second term in the White House.

Preliminary figures suggest fewer people voted this year than four years ago, when voters shattered turnout records as they elected Obama to his first term.

In most states, the numbers are shaping up to be even lower than in 2004, said Curtis Gans, the director of American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate. Still, the full picture may not be known for weeks, because much of the counting takes place after Election Day.

« By and large, people didn’t show up, » Gans said.

In Texas, turnout for the presidential race dropped almost 11 percent from 2008. Vermont and South Carolina saw declines that were almost as large. The drop-off was more than 7 percent in Maryland, where voters approved a ballot measure allowing gay marriage.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting, The Associated Press figures showed more than 117 million people had voted in the White House race, but that number will go up as more votes are counted. In 2008, 131 million people voted, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Experts calculate turnout in different ways based on who they consider eligible voters. A separate, preliminary estimate from George Mason University’s Michael McDonald put the 2012 turnout rate at 60 percent of eligible voters. That figure was expected to be revised as more precincts reported and absentee votes were counted.

The biggest plunge by far, according to the American University analysis, came in Eastern Seaboard states still reeling from the devastation from Superstorm Sandy, which wiped out power for millions and disrupted usual voting routines. Fifteen percent fewer voters cast ballots in New York this year than in 2008. In New Jersey, it was almost 12 percent. The gap in New Jersey could narrow in the coming days because elections officials have given displaced residents in some areas until Friday to cast special email ballots.

Best efforts be darned, making it to the polls in the wake of Sandy may have simply been too much for some affected voters. In Hoboken, N.J., Anthony Morrone said he’s never missed a vote — until now.

« No time, no time to vote, too much to do, » said Morrone, 76, as he surveyed the exterior of his home: a pile of junked refrigerators, a car destroyed by flooding and a curbside mountain of waterlogged debris.

In other areas not affected by the storm, a host of factors could have contributed to waning voter enthusiasm, Gans said. The 2012 race was one of the nastiest in recent memory, leaving many voters feeling turned off.

With Democrats weary from a difficult four years and Republicans splintered by a divisive primary, neither party was particularly enthused about their own candidate. Stricter voting restrictions adopted by many states may also have kept some voters away from the polls.

« Beyond the people with passion, we have a disengaged electorate, » Gans said. « This was a very tight race, there were serious things to be decided. »

Decided they were — by the millions of voters who, in many cases, braved all kinds of inconveniences to make sure their voices were heard.

Some voters in South Carolina’s Richland County waited more than four hours to cast their votes, and leaders from both parties blamed the delays on broken voting machines. Officials in Virginia and New Hampshire reported many voters were still waiting to vote when polls closed in the evening. In major battleground states like Ohio and Florida, lines snaked back and forth as voters waited patiently to cast their ballots.

« I’ve been waiting for four years to cast this vote, » said Robert Dan Perry, 64, as he cast his vote for Romney in Zebulon, N.C.

Both Obama and Republican Mitt Romney made voter turnout a top priority in the waning days of an intensely close race. But for months leading up to Election Day, both candidates were obsessed with that tiny sliver of undecided voters.

It may be that those who were still undecided Tuesday decided just not to show up, said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

« Everyone was talking about how the Democrats are unenthusiastic and the Republicans are fired up, » Kondik said. « It sounds like that was all talk. »

One bright spot in this year’s voting was the number of early and mail-in ballots cast. Before polls opened on Election Day, more than 32 million people had voted, either by mail or in person, in 34 states and the District of Columbia. In a number of states, including Iowa, Maryland and Montana, early voting appeared to far exceed totals from 2008.

___

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Zebulon, N.C., and Samantha Henry in Hoboken, N.J., contributed to this report.

Voir encore:

Fox News Conservatives Lose Credibility

Cliff Kincaid

Fox news

November 7, 2012

Although Republican Mitt Romney lost an easily winnable election, many conservative commentators and analysts took a beating as well. They were determined to believe that Romney would win no matter what Obama threw at him. They underestimated the aggressive nature of the Obama political machine and its ability to exploit economic, class, and cultural divisions in society for political gain.

Except for Juan Williams, the liberal Fox News commentator who predicted an Obama win, the personalities on Fox News were wildly off the mark in their predictions for the election. Karl Rove, Fred Barnes, Michael Barone and Dick Morris had all predicted a Romney win. Generally speaking, they thought Republicans were more excited about Romney than Democrats were about Obama. This turned out to be a fatal miscalculation.

One of the obvious and immediate conclusions is that Romney failed to get enough of the social conservative vote. Exit polls show Obama getting more of the Catholic vote, 50 percent, than Romney, who got 48 percent. Catholics make up approximately one in four U.S. voters.

Although Catholic leaders were emphasizing the themes of “life and liberty,” a reference to Catholic teachings being challenged by the Obama Administration’s pro-abortion mandates, Romney largely avoided the issue during the campaign. It was a strange omission. Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, said, “The collision course of the Obama Administration with the Catholic Church could have been averted yesterday, but now it is assured instead.”

In Maryland, a very liberal state, gay marriage won, but 47 percent voted against it. That was ten points more people than voted for Romney in Maryland. He lost the state 61-37 percent. Again, reflecting his aversion to social issues, Romney stayed out of the controversy, preferring to run a campaign based almost exclusively on economics.

On the matter of the numbers alone, Juan Williams had predicted Obama winning with 298 Electoral College votes to Romney-Ryan’s 240. The total now looks like 303-206 for Obama, though the figure is likely to rise to 332 for Obama.

On November 5, Rove, who raised $330 million for Romney, had predicted Romney winning with 285 Electoral College votes and Obama losing with 253. He said at the time that he believed that Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were “in play and very winnable” for Romney. “If crowds at his recent stops in these states are any indication of his supporters’ enthusiasm, Mr. Romney will likely be able to claim victory in these states as well,” he added.

In fact, Obama beat Romney by six points in Nevada, seven points in Wisconsin, and five points in Pennsylvania.

“The tie in the polls goes to the challenger,” Fred Barnes had said, in a Weekly Standard article headlined, “Why Romney Will Win.” He explained, “The Obama get-out-the-vote drive (GOTV) is not quite the powerful juggernaut it was in 2008 and the Republican effort is far better than four years ago.”

Barone, the anchor of Fox News election coverage, had predicted Romney winning 315 Electoral College votes and Obama only 223. “Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That’s bad news for Barack Obama… most voters oppose Obama’s major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery.”

In this Fox News video, Barone, who is also the senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, talked about a possible “hidden vote” that could lead to a Romney landslide. He said the polls showing an Obama edge were characterized by a “systemic problem” of failing to reach the actual electorate.

Morris’s prediction was Romney 325, Obama 213. “That’s right,” Morris said. “A landslide for Romney approaching the magnitude of Obama’s against McCain.” Obama beat McCain 53-46 percent.

In this video of a Morris appearance on the Fox News Greta Van Susteren show, Morris explained why he believes Mitt Romney could decisively defeat Obama and seal his fate as a one-term president. Morris said, “In the popular vote, he [Romney] is going to win by more than five points.” He said he came to this conclusion through an analysis of how the polls were overestimating Democratic turnout. “You have me back on the show,” Morris said. “You hold me accountable.”

He left no room for debate. “I’ve done this for a living,” he said, emphasizing his credentials as a political analyst.

On radio, Rush Limbaugh was convinced that more Republicans would vote for Romney in 2012 than voted for McCain in 2008, thus propelling Romney to victory over Obama. Limbaugh also emphasized that Romney was getting huge crowds at his rallies and that early voting for Romney was up. He said, “…my thoughts, my intellectual analysis of this—factoring everything I see plus the polling data—it’s not even close. Three hundred-plus electoral votes for Romney.”

In fact, Romney got only 48 percent of the vote, just two points over McCain’s total in 2008. Romney lost his home state of Massachusetts by 61-37 percent and Wisconsin, which is Paul Ryan’s home state, by 53-46.

In the end, prominent conservative news personalities made major miscalculations about where the election was heading and the nature of the two candidates and their campaigns. As Dick Morris says, they should be held accountable.

Voir enfin:

The Case of the Missing White Voters

Sean Trende

Real Clear politics

November 8, 2012

One of the more intriguing narratives for election 2012 was proposed by political scientist Brendan Nyhan fairly early on: that it was « Bizarro 2004. » The parallels to that year certainly were eerie: An incumbent adored by his base but with middling approval ratings nationally faces off against an uncharismatic, wishy-washy official from Massachusetts. The race is tight during the summer until the president breaks open a significant lead after his convention. Then, after a tepid first debate for the incumbent, the contest tightens, bringing the opposition tantalizingly close to a win, but not quite close enough.

The Election Day returns actually continued the similarities. George W. Bush won by 2.4 percent of the popular vote, which is probably about what Obama’s victory margin will be once all the ballots are counted. Republicans in 2004 won some surprising Senate seats, and picked up a handful of House seats as well. The GOP was cheered, claiming a broad mandate as a result of voters’ decision to ratify clear, unified Republican control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since 1928. As Bush famously put it, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”

Democrats, like Republicans today, were despondent. Aside from having a president they loathed in the White House for four more years, they were terrified by what seemed to be an emerging Republican majority. John Kerry had, after all, hit all of his turnout targets, only to be swamped by the Republican re-election effort. “Values voters” was the catchphrase, and an inordinate number of keystrokes were expended trying to figure out how, as Howard Dean had memorably put it before the election, Democrats could reconnect with “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

For Republicans, that despair now comes from an electorate that seems to have undergone a sea change. In the 2008 final exit polls (unavailable online), the electorate was 75 percent white, 12.2 percent African-American, 8.4 percent Latino, with 4.5 percent distributed to other ethnicities. We’ll have to wait for this year’s absolute final exit polls to come in to know the exact estimate of the composition this time, but right now it appears to be pegged at about 72 percent white, 13 percent black, 10 percent Latino and 5 percent “other.”

Obviously, this surge in the non-white vote is troubling to Republicans, who are increasingly almost as reliant upon the white vote to win as Democrats are on the non-white vote. With the white vote decreasing as a share of the electorate over time, it becomes harder and harder for Republicans to prevail.

This supposed surge in minority voting has sparked discussions about the GOP’s renewed need to draw in minority voters, especially Latinos, usually by agreeing to comprehensive immigration reform. Continuing the “Bizarro 2004” theme, Democrats are encouraging the GOP to move leftward, just as the 2004 GOP insisted that Democrats needed to abandon their opposition to the Iraq War, adopt less liberal economics, and shift more to the right on social issues in order to win.

Setting aside completely the sometimes-considerable merits of various immigration reform measures, I think these analyses are off base. First, there are real questions about the degree to which immigration policies — rather than deeper issues such as income and ideology — drive the rift between the GOP and Latinos. Remember, passage of Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986 was actually followed two years later by one of the worst GOP showings among Latinos in recent history.

Moreover, the simple fact is that the Democrats aren’t going to readily let Republicans get to their left on the issue in an attempt to poach an increasing portion of the Democratic base. If the GOP embraces things such as the DREAM Act, the Democrats can always up the ante. There are plenty of other issues on which Latinos agree with the GOP, but at a bare minimum the party will have to learn to sharply change its rhetoric on immigration before it can credibly make the case for these policies.

But most importantly, the 2012 elections actually weren’t about a demographic explosion with non-white voters. Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up.

As of this writing, Barack Obama has received a bit more than 60 million votes. Mitt Romney has received 57 million votes. Although the gap between Republicans and Democrats has closed considerably since 2008, Romney is still running about 2.5 million votes behind John McCain; the gap has closed simply because Obama is running about 9 million votes behind his 2008 totals.

Of course, there are an unknown number of ballots outstanding. If we guesstimate the total at 7 million (3 million in California, 1.5 million or so in Oregon and Washington, and another 2.5 million or so spread throughout the country), that would bring the total number of votes cast in 2012 to about 125 million: 5 million votes shy of the number cast four years ago.

With this base line, and armed with the exit-poll data, we can get a pretty good estimate of how many whites, blacks, and Latinos cast ballots in both 2008 and 2012. Assuming the 72/13/10/5 percentage split described above for 2012, that would equate to about 91.6 million votes cast by whites, 16.6 million by blacks, 12.7 million by Latinos, with the balance of 6.3 million votes spread among other groups.

Compare this with 2008, when the numbers were 98.6 million whites, 16.3 million blacks, 11 million Latinos, and 5.9 million from other groups.

In other words, if our underlying assumption — that there are 7 million votes outstanding — is correct, then the African-American vote only increased by about 300,000 votes, or 0.2 percent, from 2008 to 2012. The Latino vote increased by a healthier 1.7 million votes, while the “other” category increased by about 470,000 votes.

This is nothing to sneeze at, but in terms of the effect on the electorate, it is dwarfed by the decline in the number of whites. Again, if our assumption about the total number of votes cast is correct, almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008. This isn’t readily explainable by demographic shifts either; although whites are declining as a share of the voting-age population, their raw numbers are not.

Moreover, we should have expected these populations to increase on their own, as a result of overall population growth. If we build in an estimate for the growth of the various voting-age populations over the past four years and assume 55 percent voter turnout, we find ourselves with about 8 million fewer white voters than we would expect given turnout in the 2008 elections and population growth.

Had the same number of white voters cast ballots in 2012 as did in 2008, the 2012 electorate would have been about 74 percent white, 12 percent black, and 9 percent Latino (the same result occurs if you build in expectations for population growth among all these groups). In other words, the reason this electorate looked so different from the 2008 electorate is almost entirely attributable to white voters staying home. The other groups increased their vote, but by less than we would have expected simply from population growth.

Put another way: The increased share of the minority vote as a percent of the total vote is not the result of a large increase in minorities in the numerator, it is a function of many fewer whites in the denominator.

So who were these whites and why did they stay home? My first instinct was that they might be conservative evangelicals turned off by Romney’s Mormonism or moderate past. But the decline didn’t seem to be concentrated in Southern states with high evangelical populations.

So instead, I looked at my current home state of Ohio, which has counted almost all of its votes (absentees are counted first here). The following map shows how turnout presently stands relative to 2008. The brightest red counties met or exceeded 2008 turnout. Each gradation of lighter red represents a 1 percent drop in the percentage of votes cast from 2008. Blue counties are at less than 90 percent of the 2008 vote.

We can see that the counties clustered around Columbus in the center of the state turned out in full force, as did the suburban counties near Cincinnati in the southwest. These heavily Republican counties are the growing areas of the state, filled with white-collar workers.

Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.

My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challenger’s failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters’ fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the “47 percent” gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home.

We’ll have a better sense of how this holds up when the final exit-poll data is released, and we can generate some very detailed crosstabs. And it may be that my estimate of the number of votes outstanding is low, though I think it is more likely to be high.

Of course, none of this is intended to place any sort of asterisk on Obama’s win: Some of these missing voters might well have voted for him had they opted to participate in the election. Moreover, there are still huge reservoirs of African-Americans and Latinos who don’t register and vote every election. Elections are decided on who shows up, not on who might have shown up.

But in terms of interpreting elections, and analyzing the future, the substantial drop-off in the white vote is a significant data point. Had Latino and African-American voters turned out in massive numbers, we might really be talking about a realignment of sorts, although we would have to see if the Democrats could sustain it with someone other than Obama atop the ticket (they could not do so in 2010). As it stands, the bigger puzzle for figuring out the path of American politics is who these non-voters are, why they stayed home, and whether they might be reactivated in 2016 (by either party).

//

Sean Trende is Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com.