Here's an amazing bit of election data that is being utterly ignored: America stayed home on election day.
The democrats don't want to admit it, and the Republican's are still trying to figure out what happened.
Sure, we've all heard about how the RATIO of blacks, Hispanics and women still favor Obama, and how that likely made the difference. But what's being ignored is how many people DIDN'T vote for Obama this time around.
In 2008, a total of 69,498,215 Americans voted for Obama, but last week only 63,512,486 returned to the ballot box to do the same thing.
Why did almost SIX MILLION 2008 Obama supporters refuse to vote for him again? And what does that say about America's opinion of his job performance? Finally, why couldn't virtually ANY Republican take advantage of such dissatisfaction?
Was America looking for REAL hope and change, but got the same old crony-capital team delivering the same result: milk the populace through more spending for government unions and Wall Street, who then contribute back to the politicians?
Normally, a desertion of almost 10% of your followers would spell defeat, but in this case Romney did even worse in 2012 than McCain did in 2008 - 59,668,347 to 59,948,240. A net total of 279,893 McCain supporters stayed home too. So was America pleased with the alternative the Republican put forward? Hardly, just more of the same. OK, maybe a little bit worse.
In fact, this election could be seen as a negative election, one where more people voted AGAINST the other guy, instead of voting FOR someone. America didn't like Obama's track record, but they apparently liked the Republican position on social issues even less. And that dynamic reflects the way campaign money was spent; it was all about the negatives. History shows negatives tend to dampen turnout. It all makes sense. Unhappy Americans stayed home in droves.
So was this "win" a mandate for the Obama platform? Hardly.
He just didn't get defeated.
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