Great analysis and absolutely factual in my opinion. The meme that Republican voters stayed away from the polls is false. They voted heavily. Asian and Hispanic voter tallies were down slightly from 2008, but they still voted in big numbers. Black voter turnout was the highest of any group. Overall, the minority vote put Obama over the top. There is no question of that.
You raise an excellent point about increase in the voter rolls since 2004. My guess is the expansion has largely been in minority voting ranks which obviously benefits the Dems. The article I posted said Republicans will need to pry away some of these voters in the next two election cycles. That appears to be happening among Hispanic voters according to recent polling. Will it be enough? I don't know. And again, I don't think anyone clearly knows true voter intensity by party affiliation. All of those variables will be critical.
Yes, I agree. But Obama's take of the white vote is actually higher than for a number of other Democrats in history. Of course, they lost in major landslides. If I recall correctly, you need to go back to 1964 to find a Democrat who won the White vote in a national election.
2004 also proved that a massive influx of new voters from one cycle to the next doesn't necessarily mean that it helps the Democrats. The lion's share of those new voters from 2000 to 2004 went for President Bush! And while my Democratic friends in 2004 kept saying that Kerry would win, I kept looking at the state polling and kept seeing too much weakness for Kerry where he should not be weak. I also predicted that Bush would win with 286 EV, but predicted +2.2% margin (he won with +2.46%).
However, in 2008, the lion's share of new voters, the influx from 2004 to 2008, were indeed for then-Senator Obama.
When you look at a presidential election, ignore the national numbers initially and look only at the battle on the ground in the 50 states. And above all else, look at the margins in Ohio - the oldest and most reliable belllwether of the nation, and now, Virginia - the new bellwether of the nation.
You are also correct that the asian and AI vote actually receded somewhat and I am 100% sure that 50% of this has to do with NYC and Hurricane Sandy and the other 50% has to do with California, where 500,000 less ballots were cast than in 2008, and predominantly from areas with considerable asian populations. But a slight negative growth rate doesn't mean much. It could be a statistical anomaly and we will have to wait and see how 2016 turns out.
2 things we know absolutely for sure:
-The White vote, in terms of percentage of the overall electorate on election day, continues to shrink. In fact, the white vote has been shrinking for a long, long time.
-The Latino and Black vote, in terms of percentage of the overall electorate on election day, both continue to grow, esp. the Latino vote.
In the most recent VA gubernatorial election, where McAuliffe won by +2.53%, black voter turnout was 20%, exactly identical to the statistic from the GE 2012, and black voters voted with the same intensity for McAuliffe as they did for Obama. So much for the meme that minorities are planning to sit at home in an off year. They came out, they exercised their right to vote. Basta.
Thanks for the kind words, btw.
