2012 Presidential Campaign

[JPhillips]

Rove was spectacularly successful at making Karl Rove rich.

It's just a question of priorities.

[Arles]

I think this is a pretty interesting article about the turnout and 2012 election:

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).

The Case of the Missing White Voters | RealClearPolitics

[JonInMiddleGA]

Fulton allowed Usher to skip voting line | www.ajc.com

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Arles

I think this is a pretty interesting article about the turnout and 2012 election:


The Case of the Missing White Voters | RealClearPolitics

Thanks Arles, I was going to try to work out some numbers on this very thing (based on Romney getting fewer total votes than McCain), saves me considerable effort I think.

[JonInMiddleGA]

re: that RCP article Arlie linked

I'm shocked that RCP didn't take the obvious step that took me less than 5 minutes.

Keep in mind now that Romney won the GOP primary in Ohio 37.9 to 37.1
But those purple counties he's talking about with the low turnout on Tuesday?

Vinton - 43-27 Santorum
Athens - 60-20 Santorum
Gallia - 47-29 Santorum
I see no reason to believe this was about the campaign itself as RCP proposes. This was a rejection of Romney the candidate that occurred long before 47% or anything else.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Arles

I think this is a pretty interesting article about the turnout and 2012 election:

The Case of the Missing White Voters | RealClearPolitics

It's bad math. There are a lot of votes that get added between election day and when the votes are certified. You can't compare Thursday results in 2012 to the final results in 2008 since so many votes are outstanding.

Ohio turnout is actually up over 1% from this same time in the last election cycle. In fact, almost all the swing states have higher turnout (the exception being NH). Dropoffs in voter turnout were heaviest in the Hurricane states. 10% between New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Turnout comparisons have to be made from the same points in the cycle. This is why RCP should leave number crunching to those who have studied math and not polysci majors.

[Thomkal]

Looks like Romney really did think he was going to win. His "President-Elect Romney Website" was found by somebody and got reported on before it could be shut down.

Mitt Romney Transition Website Draft Uncovered

[Arles]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It's bad math. There are a lot of votes that get added between election day and when the votes are certified. You can't compare Thursday results in 2012 to the final results in 2008 since so many votes are outstanding.

Ohio turnout is actually up over 1% from this same time in the last election cycle. In fact, almost all the swing states have higher turnout (the exception being NH). Dropoffs in voter turnout were heaviest in the Hurricane states. 10% between New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Turnout comparisons have to be made from the same points in the cycle. This is why RCP should leave number crunching to those who have studied math and not polysci majors.

Did you even read the article? It basically says that turnout was down in Ohio in certain areas - specifically in very conservative counties, while up in more democratic areas. Combine that with Jon's post on how the counties went heavily Santorum and it makes sense that turnout was down in some heavy republican counties because the voters didn't connect with Romney like they did with Santorum.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Ohio turnout is actually up over 1% from this same time in the last election cycle.

So they've counted the exact same everything for it to be "this same time" in the cycle.?

Otherwise, we don't know what's been done now vs what was done at the same moment four years ago. Maybe they're ahead of pace, maybe they're behind the pace, maybe more problems/provisionals, maybe less.

Unless you've got that data (which I can't imagine even OH officials know for sure) then I'd say you're guilty of engaging in some bad math of your own.

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Thanks Arles, I was going to try to work out some numbers on this very thing (based on Romney getting fewer total votes than McCain), saves me considerable effort I think.

Here's the danger with that; today, there are still a LOT of provisional and uncounted ballots. Its dangerous estimating the total voter turnout until we have final numbers, as Nate Silver of all people just pointed out.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Looks like Romney really did think he was going to win. His "President-Elect Romney Website" was found by somebody and got reported on before it could be shut down.

Mitt Romney Transition Website Draft Uncovered

Didn't the media report on the existence of the website - as part of a story on his overall transition plans IIRC - like a week or so ago?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Here's the danger with that; today, there are still a LOT of provisional and uncounted ballots. Its dangerous estimating the total voter turnout until we have final numbers, as Nate Silver of all people just pointed out.

I'm pretty sure nobody is paying RCP for his analysis, damned sure ain't nobody paying me for mine. If there's a major data shift, further analysis can be warranted but for ballparking (and woolgathering) purposes there's certainly enough significant data on hand to engage.

[M GO BLUE!!!]

The site opened with a quote from Romney: "I'm excited about our prospects as a nation. My priority it putting people back to work."

I seriously hope that was a direct quote from the site & not a typo in the article.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

So they've counted the exact same everything for it to be "this same time" in the cycle.?

Otherwise, we don't know what's been done now vs what was done at the same moment four years ago. Maybe they're ahead of pace, maybe they're behind the pace, maybe more problems/provisionals, maybe less.

Unless you've got that data (which I can't imagine even OH officials know for sure) then I'd say you're guilty of engaging in some bad math of your own.

I don't have the data on it either. That's why I'm not writing a column making up guesses for what those numbers are. He could have gone off of numbers from previous years as an estimate, but he didn't. He just made up a number of outstanding ballots that was 20% lower than 2008.

One method is at least using real data in the analysis (even if they turn out wrong for the reasons you mentioned), the other is just making them up out of thin air.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Looks like Romney really did think he was going to win. His "President-Elect Romney Website" was found by somebody and got reported on before it could be shut down.

Mitt Romney Transition Website Draft Uncovered

I wonder if child soldiers in Burundi get donated that page by a relief organization.

[bronconick]

Originally Posted by stevew

I wonder if child soldiers in Burundi get donated that page by a relief organization.

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by bronconick

OMG! LOLOL

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Didn't the media report on the existence of the website - as part of a story on his overall transition plans IIRC - like a week or so ago?

I don't know Jon, this was the first I'd heard of it. But really no surprise that he'd have one ready just in case he won. Just surprising it was available after he lost.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by M GO BLUE!!!

I seriously hope that was a direct quote from the site & not a typo in the article.

Me too, and somehow I don't think he's quite as excited about the prospect of the nation now

[Peregrine]

I have to say these #drunknatesilver tweets are pretty funny, some of them.

17 of the best #DrunkNateSilver tweets · assignmentdesk1 · Storify

[CrimsonFox]

Karl Rove arguing:
Fox News, Karl Rove Argue Over The Outcome In Ohio - YouTube

reminds me of Don Ameche at the end of Trading Places...

http://www.hark.com/clips/gvkmhgbgcf...chines-back-on

[Suburban Rhythm]

Mitt Romney's Campaign Cancels Staffers Credit Cards In The Middle Of The Night - Forbes

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.
Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by bronconick

haha...that's too funny.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Suburban Rhythm

Mitt Romney's Campaign Cancels Staffers Credit Cards In The Middle Of The Night - Forbes

Makes sense. The guy who made millions through buying distressed companies and making them more efficient stopped paying his employees as soon as they stopped adding value.

If I had donated money to the Romney campaign and/or if I was a creditor of the campaign, I'd be very happy to see that.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Here's the danger with that; today, there are still a LOT of provisional and uncounted ballots. Its dangerous estimating the total voter turnout until we have final numbers, as Nate Silver of all people just pointed out.

Unless you want to argue that provisional ballots are unevenly distributed in a non-random fashion, you can extrapolate which counties turned out more or less relative to their 2008 vote. So saying that X county colored blue turned out 88% of their vote vs. 2008 while X county colored dark red turned out 103% is probably incorrect, but you can be pretty certain that when final votes are tallied the dark red one will have cast significantly more votes compared to 2008 than any blue one.

(Of course, there is also another step involving population growth here - which tends to see people go from rural counties to suburban ones, but that seems like a lot of research and math. And barring natural disaster, a 10% or greater loss in population over 4 years for any one county would be abnormally high.)

[molson]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Makes sense. The guy who made millions through buying distressed companies and making them more efficient stopped paying his employees as soon as they stopped adding value.

If I had donated money to the Romney campaign and/or if I was a creditor of the campaign, I'd be very happy to see that.

I'm going to guess it was an unintentional mistake of a staffer rather than than Romney thanking his supporters during his concession speech and then barking to an aid as he made his way off the stage, "now shut off all those motherfuckers credit cards before they leave!".

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by molson

I'm going to guess it was an unintentional mistake of a staffer rather than than Romney thanking his supporters during his concession speech and then barking to an aid as he made his way off the stage, "now shut off all those motherfuckers credit cards before they leave!".

I'm thinking that it might have more to do with a history (both Dem and GOP) of staffers on the losing side taking the credit cards to bars/clubs/strip-joints after the returns are in and running up huge "Fuck it" tabs.

No way to tell the difference between those guys and the poor slobs who were just taking a legit cab ride home from campaign work. So you just cut off all the cards.

[molson]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I'm thinking that it might have more to do with a history (both Dem and GOP) of staffers on the losing side taking the credit cards to bars/clubs/strip-joints after the returns are in and running up huge "Fuck it" tabs.

No way to tell the difference between those guys and the poor slobs who were just taking a legit cab ride home from campaign work. So you just cut off all the cards.

Could be, though I still disagree with your implication that this was Romney's personal call when to shut off the credit cards. I don't think he's involved with that aspect of the campaign at all.

[albionmoonlight]

Fair enough. Still think that it was the right call. But I can see how it plays into the Romney as Scrooge thing--which has always been an unfair stereotype of someone who has a lot of money but who also has seemed quite willing to donate it to charity.

[mckerney]

Fox really needs to wrap up the talk about how half the country is lazy and just wants handouts, they have a War on Christmas to cover!

[kcchief19]

Has Lawrence O'Donnell done a bit yet about how Romney ensured his loss by refusing to write a concession speech ahead of time, then playing clips from The West Wing talking about how you don't want risk the wrath of god by not not writing a concession speech? Sounds like something he could spend a whole show on.

[Buccaneer]

Just catching up on the California propositions. Regarding Prop 30, I think those in that state should 1) see if you do get expected rise in tax revenues, and 2) to see if the monies will go to school districts instead administation and pension funds. Setting apart the apparent illegality of retroactive taxation, there are easy ways for the 'rich' to avoid paying sales tax on big ticket items. Also, the language is not clear where the monies will go to and I know there are many that apparently trust the government (despite earning tons of distrust), but hold them accountable and be critical.

No surprise on Prop 38. I live in a very anti-tax city and we have always voted down open-ended or nebulous tax revenue proposals (as everyone should). But when a tax increase comes up for votes that lays exactly what the monies will go for (i.e., projects by name), we easily pass them (as we did this year).

[CrimsonFox]

What an obsessively fun thing to watch.

Disappearing Romney: Watch Mitt Romney's Facebook Likes Decrease in Real Time

[M GO BLUE!!!]

BBC News - US election: Unhappy Americans ask to secede from US

More than 100,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to allow their states to secede from the US, after President Barack Obama's re-election.

The appeals were filed on the White House's We the People website.

Most of the 20 states with petitions voted for Republican Mitt Romney.

The US constitution contains no clause allowing states to leave the union. By Monday night the White House had not responded.

In total, more than 20 petitions have been filed. One for Texas has reached the 25,000-signature threshold at which the White House promises a response.

'Blatant abuses'
The last time states officially seceded, the US Civil War followed.

Most of the petitions merely quote the opening line of America's Declaration of Independence from Britain, in which America's founders stated their right to "dissolve the political bands" and form a new nation.

Currently, the most popular petition is from Texas, which voted for Mr Romney by some 15 percentage points more than it did for the Democratic incumbent.

The text complains of "blatant abuses" of Americans' rights.

It cites the Transportation Security Administration, whose staff have been accused of intrusive screening at airports.

Here we go...

[molson]

I'm kind surprised they don't get trolled all the time when they promise a response after 25,000 signatures. Surely the internet can come up with something more interesting than secession trolling though.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

I'm kind surprised they don't get trolled all the time when they promise a response after 25,000 signatures.

If that response is something that creates even some microscopic chance that a state could actually escape, they'll get more than trolled, they'll be flooded.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I don't have the data on it either. That's why I'm not writing a column making up guesses for what those numbers are. He could have gone off of numbers from previous years as an estimate, but he didn't. He just made up a number of outstanding ballots that was 20% lower than 2008.

One method is at least using real data in the analysis (even if they turn out wrong for the reasons you mentioned), the other is just making them up out of thin air.

Ding. 538 has something about the voter turnout today - simply put, the voter tally isn't fully counted yet. So trying to compare the turnout versus 2008 is rather premature.

Turnout Steady in Swing States and Down in Others, But Many Votes Remain Uncounted - NYTimes.com

Also, I'd fully expect voter turnout to be down in the NE due to Sandy. Given that NY/NJ are two the largest "down" states, this may very well turn out to be the case.

[Buccaneer]

I think the "Blue Wall" was what I was thinking when I predicted no way Romney would win earlier this year. I simply went to RCP and played around with that great map. It's hard to come up with any viable scenarios when one team already had 242 of 270 points locked up.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by M GO BLUE!!!

BBC News - US election: Unhappy Americans ask to secede from US



Here we go...

Isn't this like asking your parents if you can run away? I mean, shouldn't they be petitioning their state government?

[I. J. Reilly]

It's more like a 14 year old girl screaming "I HATE YOU." Then she runs to her room to stare lovingly up at the Grover Norquist poster on her wall.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by I. J. Reilly

It's more like a 14 year old girl screaming "I HATE YOU." Then she runs to her room to stare lovingly up at the Grover Norquist poster on her wall.

Nailed it.

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by I. J. Reilly

It's more like a 14 year old girl screaming "I HATE YOU." Then she runs to her room to stare lovingly up at the Grover Norquist poster on her wall.

I'm glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read this part.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

I'm glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read this part.

No shit, that was awesome.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

I'm glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read this part.

This.

[Thomkal]

Romney still in denial about why he and the Republicans lost the election:

Romney reflects on his loss in call with campaign donors - latimes.com

[Shkspr]

I have to say, I think all this celebrity has gone to Nate Silver's head. I've been checking his website regularly and I don't think the bastard has updated his forecast in a week.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

I have to say, I think all this celebrity has gone to Nate Silver's head. I've been checking his website regularly and I don't think the bastard has updated his forecast in a week.

Almost got me. Well played.

[Crapshoot]

Two really good pieces, one on polling, and one on the GOP, from two guys who nobody can call RINO's - Ramesh Ponnoru and Dan McLaughlin.

Sometimes, It Really Is Different This Time – A Polling Post-Mortem (Part I of III) | RedState

The Party’s Problem - Ramesh Ponnuru - National Review Online

[RainMaker]

I don't see how the RedState piece is good. The guy made an absolute fool of himself last week and it reads like a bunch of excuses as to why he was wrong.

How about we start calling people like McLaughlin for what they are? Dumb partisan hacks. People who don't know what the fuck they are talking about but present an image that they do. People who go as far as to bash people who do actually know what they are doing and have the results to back it up. Why anyone would take anything he says seriously is beyond me after embarrassing himself last week.

I do think the Ponnuru is good. He hits a lot of interesting points and things I hadn't thought of. My only gripe is that he does seem to unerplay the demographic shift and why that's taking place. It's tough to win elections when the groups your party openly vilifies is growing at a faster rate.

[miked]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Romney still in denial about why he and the Republicans lost the election:

Romney reflects on his loss in call with campaign donors - latimes.com

Well, he and others are just doubling down on stupid. That piece reads exactly like what people like O'Reilly are saying...people vote for Obama because they get stuff. As if the only reason to vote for him is that targeted groups are getting things...which is funny because I think the same case could be made for certain groups of people supporting Romney.