# did Romney have it in the bag until his "binders full of women" or his "47%" comment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 11, 2020, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432 "2020-06-11T05:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/21 "2020-06-11T19:33:21Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Trump bailed him out this time, but he might not the next time. I think it’s a pretty safe bet. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/22 "2020-06-11T19:54:42Z")
**Little Nemo @12:** Ford never beat NOBODY. I still remember the **National Lampoon** headline from 1974: “Ford Wins Presidency with Smallest Majority Ever: Carries No States, Earns No Votes.” ---
**Author:** ![SwissMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@SwissMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SwissMan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/23 "2020-06-11T20:57:36Z")
I’ve read in several different places that the Romney campaign in 2012 believed the old Republican canard about the polls being wrong, and that support for Romney was greater than it actually was. They apparently went so far as to design a transition website due to the belief that they had a good shot at winning. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/24 "2020-06-11T21:15:43Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > **Little Nemo @12:** Ford never beat NOBODY. > > I still remember the **National Lampoon** headline from 1974: “Ford Wins Presidency with Smallest Majority Ever: Carries No States, Earns No Votes.” Which is also how he won the Vice Presidency ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/25 "2020-06-11T21:15:55Z")
> [@SwissMan](#): > > I’ve read in several different places that the Romney campaign in 2012 believed the old Republican canard about the polls being wrong, and that support for Romney was greater than it actually was. They apparently went so far as to design a transition website due to the belief that they had a good shot at winning. There were definitely people inside the Romney campaign that lived in a bubble of unskew the polls and still thought there would be a Bradley effect resulting in a Romney win. Having a transition website probably took a few hours at most from some tech savvy interns. Nothing wrong with that. Romney winning would have been a surprise but not a Trump like shock. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/26 "2020-06-11T21:17:54Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > **Little Nemo @12:** Ford never beat NOBODY. > > I still remember the **National Lampoon** headline from 1974: “Ford Wins Presidency with Smallest Majority Ever: Carries No States, Earns No Votes.” Wouldn’t he have needed at least 51 + 220 votes? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/27 "2020-06-11T22:33:13Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > **Little Nemo @12:** Ford never beat NOBODY. Nonetheless, Ford was the incumbent President in 1976 and he did lose the election. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/28 "2020-06-11T23:07:27Z")
The final national poll tracking aggregate in 2016 was actually more accurate than 2012. In 2012 I believe they overestimated Romney’s strength with independents. He did win that group of voters according to exit polls as predicted, but Obama was closer than predicted. Furthermore while turn-out for Obama did dip from 2008, it did not fall by the margin the Romney campaign were hoping for. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2020, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/29 "2020-06-11T23:09:11Z")
In discussing incumbents that lost, you hae to take into account that in boith 1912 and 1992, there was a viable third party that cost the incumbent re-election. Since 1900, the incumbent has a lost a 2 party race only twice: 1932 and 1980. U think the Republicans really expected to win in 2012. Who was the idiot who was, I think, the head of the RNC who had a meltdown when Fox–yes Fox–called Ohio, and the election, for Obama at a point in the vote count where Romney was still leading? Of course the statisticians at Fox were right. The details were never explained but it must have been something like that the results in Cleveland hadn’t yet come in and they knew what to expect when it did. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/30 "2020-06-12T00:22:23Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > There were definitely people inside the Romney campaign that lived in a bubble of unskew the polls and still thought there would be a Bradley effect resulting in a Romney win. Yes, that was the election of “unskewing the polls”. It’s where we all (hopefully) learned that often party identification is a lagging indicator, not a leading one (i.e. lots of folks called themselves Democrats or Independents because they were voting Obama, so weighting it back to a ‘normal’ distribution of Republicans was incorrect). That may sound familiar, because it’s part of what the letter Trump’s campaign sent to CNN was complaining about when they asked them to retract their poll. > [@dalej42](#): > > Romney winning would have been a surprise but not a Trump like shock. This is actually backwards. Romney was a much longer shot on election day itself than Trump was. 538, for example, had [Romney with an 8% chance](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nov-5-late-poll-gains-for-obama-leave-romney-with-longer-odds/) of winning. Trump was [28.6%](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/). Or, to put it more in their terms, Trump was a “normal polling error” away (which is exactly what we got), while Romney was “drawing to an inside straight”. It only feels like Trump was a long-shot due to the long-shot nature of his entire campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2020, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/31 "2020-06-12T00:27:40Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > U think the Republicans really expected to win in 2012. Who was the idiot who was, I think, the head of the RNC who had a meltdown when Fox–yes Fox–called Ohio, and the election, for Obama at a point in the vote count where Romney was still leading? Karl Rove. Back to the OP. There’s a temptation to evaluate things retrospectively after we know what happened. Romney lost, so we look back and decide that this or that moment was the key one. If Romney won, we’d do the same with Obama, and point to some (now nearly forgotten) event and say that it was the key moment where Obama lost the race. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/32 "2020-06-15T17:21:12Z")
I highly recommend _Double Down: Game Change 2012_ by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin for a great behind-the-scenes look at the Obama v. Romney matchup (their earlier _Game Change_, about the 2008 campaign, is equally good). The Obama team really, and I think accurately, believed they could lose that year, as the economy was still struggling and there were a lot of highly motivated GOP Obama-haters who wanted to take back the White House. Obama’s poor performance in the first debate, the relative difficulty of his fundraising compared to four years earlier (which one of his finance staff compared to “fish jumping into the boat”) and the eventual but necessary decision to move towards negative campaigning (the President’s TV ads were far more anti-Romney than pro-Obama) were all key factors. > **[Double Down: Game Change 2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Down:_Game_Change_2012)** > > Double Down: Game Change 2012 is a book written by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2012 United States presidential election, in which Barack Obama was re-elected as President of the United States, defeating Mitt Romney. The book, published by Penguin Press, is a behind-the-scenes narrative of the Obama and Romney campaigns. It is the sequel to Game Change, which explored the 2008 United States presidential election. Double Down was released on November 5, 2013. > ... > [@zimaane](#): > > Which is also how he won the Vice Presidency Actually, Ford won the Vice Presidency with 479 votes (92 in the Senate, and 387 in the House). ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/33 "2020-06-15T18:50:10Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I highly recommend _Double Down: Game Change 2012_ by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin for a great behind-the-scenes look at the Obama v. Romney matchup (their earlier _Game Change_, about the 2008 campaign, is equally good). The Obama team really, and I think accurately, believed they could lose that year, as the economy was still struggling and there were a lot of highly motivated GOP Obama-haters who wanted to take back the White House. Obama’s poor performance in the first debate, the relative difficulty of his fundraising compared to four years earlier (which one of his finance staff compared to “fish jumping into the boat”) and the eventual but necessary decision to move towards negative campaigning (the President’s TV ads were far more anti-Romney than pro-Obama) were all key factors. > > [Double Down: Game Change 2012 - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Down:_Game_Change_2012) Yeah, I read that one (and “Double Down” which covered the 2008 election). ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/34 "2020-06-15T19:31:43Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Yeah, I read that one (and “Double Down” which covered the 2008 election). I mean, of course, “Game Change” which covered the 2008 election. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/35 "2020-06-15T20:57:30Z")
Looking at 538’s approval rating aggregates, the current president has never been above 50% approval in his entire term and has been in net-negative (approval - disapproval) territory since about his second week in office. No other president in their history (going back to Truman) has been so consistently disliked for the duration. It looks like Obama came close to this guy’s net rating very briefly in the fall of 2011 (-8.6% vs Individual-ONE’s -9.8% at the same point in the terms), but Obama rebounded and went into positive territory by February. Of the presidents who were re-elected, the 4th year showed a general upward trend. The only time this president has shown a consistent upward trend was Dec '17 to May '18, after which he has been mostly level around -12% net. He did have a brief peak at -3.9% in early April of this year but has slid steadily down to the current -14.4%. So, overall, the polling data shows him in a very weak position, unlike that of any other president who managed to get re-elected. At this point, if he manages to get re-elected, it would be very anomalous and more than a little questionable. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/36 "2020-06-16T14:51:39Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > …At this point, if he manages to get re-elected, it would be very anomalous and more than a little questionable. Pretty much like his entire Presidency, then. ---
**Author:** ![ThisIsTheEnd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisistheend/32/4713_2.png) [@ThisIsTheEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisIsTheEnd)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/37 "2020-06-16T15:45:40Z")
No, Romney never was even close to winning, never mind having it in the bag. IN and NC reverted to form in 2012, that’s it. Obama won Ohio again, for crissakes. Shit like that doesn’t change votes, it just reinforces impressions, or in his case, proved them. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/38 "2020-06-16T19:36:10Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > This sounds right to me, although I think Florida (and Georgia) are already lost causes due to the high likelihood of shenanigans in those two states in particular. At this point I think it’s more likely that Texas will flip before Florida due to that issue. That leaves PA, MI, WI, AZ, and NC as the 5 states to really focus on. The next two states that could possibly flip, TX and MN, are unlikely to make a difference. If we get to the point where Minnesota is a concern, that means Biden has likely already lost. If we get to the point where we’re talking about flipping Texas, that means Trump has already lost. I agree with most of this. I’d just add NV as another state to focus on. Nevada usually doesn’t get frequent, high-quality polling, but at this point indications are it could be an important swing state in November. ETA — I see this is a hijack. To be continued in a different (existing) thread… ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/39 "2020-06-16T19:44:01Z")
At no point did Romney ever had it in the bag. His high-water mark, IIRC, was after the first debate, when he temporarily held a 4% nationwide lead in the polls over Obama. It dissipated quite rapidly and although the election was still narrow even on the eve of Election Day, Romney most certainly never had it in hand. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432/40 "2020-06-16T20:28:40Z")
Romney was fairly convinced he would win up until the returns came in. Part of this was his looking at older polls, part was his being convinced that Obama was using the wrong tactics, and part of this was believing his own propaganda. In reality neither was assured victory. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-romney-have-it-in-the-bag-until-his-binders-full-of-women-or-his-47-comment/855432.md?page=3)