Are their any Romney supporters here? I expect so.
Did you occur to you during the run up to the election that he might lose? Or were you really shocked that he did lose?
I keep hearing news stories of prominent republican types that seemed to deny the reality that he was losing during the election night.
Shock and denial of the possibility that he could lose is odd to me considering how much coverage was dedicated to how close the popular vote was the week or two before.
So is there anyone in doperland that really really REALLY thought there was no way he would lose? If so, could you tell me how you felt election night and how you feel now?
For the record, I didn’t vote for Obama, but I was relatively confident he would win…so I wasn’t shocked when Romney lost, and really not that terribly disappointed. I somehow doubt anyone on the dope would be so hardcore Romney fans that they hadn’t considered that he could lose…but hey…it’s worth a shot. I’m interested in your reaction if there is someone out there.
I am not a Republican, and I was not shocked that he lost, but I was surprised: they spent a HUGE pile of money on his campaign, and whenever the Republicans spend that kind of money, they tend to win.
I’m not a Romney supporter, but I think their expectations that he was going to win were genuine. It was a close race - Obama was clearly in the lead but Romney was just behind him and appeared to be gaining. Romney supporters undoubtedly believed that at the last minute, he’d gain just a couple of percentage points and that would put him over the top.
I wasn’t shocked at all. The old guard, some of talk radio and Fox News were so busy convincing themselves that he was going to win that they ignored or were in denial about so many signs that he wasn’t. The current Republican party does NOT resonate with an America that’s changed so much in the last ten years, heck even five years.
Something that annoys me about all this. Especially with the talking heads on MSNBC.
Ever since Romney got his swing from the first debate, pundits from the left were pretty much all saying: “It’s going to be a close race, I hope Obama wins, but it will be by the skin of his teeth.” (With the exception of Nate Silver of course)
Now that the election is over and Mittens got his ass handed to him, all the pundits from the left are saying: “Can you believe it? Those silly Repubs actually thought they had a chance! They must be living in a bubble.”
Well excuse me pundits, but you were living in that exact same bubble pre Nov 7th.
I’m all for a good Republican bashing. But this aint one of them. Nobody knew with absolute certainty who was going to win.
I generally but not exclusively vote republican. I was not surprised at all. In fact it went pretty much the way I figured when I saw the bad line up of candidates they started off with. If anything I was surprised there was that much of a boost after the first debate. I thought that last election the dems could have put up a potted plant and won. This time if the republicans were able to put up a decent candidate I thought they had a shot. Romney wasn’t it.
I think the vast majority of replies you’re gonna get are going to come from liberals here. Considering how overwhelmingly liberal this site is, you’d probably be better off just PMing the, like, 2 or 3 people on here who might have voted for Romney.
Anyway, I think most people on the Republican side were resigned to losing up until the first debate. The first debate changed many people’s perceptions of Mitt and gave conservatives a huge boost of optimism. Many of my conservative friends have said that they liked him better as time went on and they were getting a lot more excited about him in October than they had been before the debates.
All along, Obama had an advantage but it was close enough towards the end there that I definitely think that most Mitt fans sincerely thought he’d close the gap and pull it off. It was definitely a close one (even here on the SDMB elections forum, people would take occasional breaks from gushing about how amazing Obama is to post things like “How come it’s such a close race?”)
I was not that surprised Obama won, but I also wouldn’t have been surprised if Mitt had managed some last minute momentum and gotten those extra couple percentage points to win.
Not a Romney supporter but I was surprised. I live in a very red area of a red state and I think the Republicans were convinced that the polls did not show a big wave of people that would suddenly rise up on election day and put an end to Obama’s shenanigans. I think a lot of that rubbed off on me through being around people whose world view seems to be shaped by Rush and right wing email forwards.
Of course not. The polls were as close the last few days as I’ve ever seen them just prior to an election, so that didn’t leave much room for the losing side to be shocked. Why, would you have been shocked if Obama had lost despite not having a commanding lead?
30+ years of watching the nation relentlessly march to the Right and the Republicans get away with everything will do that to you. I’m still surprised they didn’t just do something like have the Supreme Court declare Romney the winner.
I’m shocked that people are shocked. I’m also shocked that anyone thought this was going to be a close election. I couldn’t understand why anyone thought the popular vote was relevant to anything. In the months, weeks, and days leading up to the election, Obama was unanimously polling ahead in VA, OH, PA, MI, and CO. You didn’t have to look any further than that.
A cursory glance at the polls would’ve told you that either Obama would win by a landslide or that science would be markedly flawed.
I was a supporter but I wasn’t shocked in the least that he lost. I called his nomination a year out but also his defeat a few months ago. I am well versed in statistics and understand the electoral college which few people in general are. I tried to break the news gently to friends and family last summer but they really did believe he would win in the end.
The only exciting part of the last days of the campaign were just after Obama’s abysmal performance during the 1st debate. If Obama repeated that performance, an upset victory by Romney could have happened but it wasn’t assured.
I still think Romney would have made a good president. He was really good Republican governor of Massachusetts which is a mostly one-party Democratic state has a habit of producing great Republican governors oddly enough. The national perception of Romney seemed way off to me during the campaign. He is rich but that is only because he is super-competent at everything he touches. That is not a negative in my view at all.
However, Obama is much more of a centrist and much better at foreign policy than I would have predicted (I think it is really Hilary Clinton pulling those strings though) so it isn’t a total loss.
Whoever got elected has their work cut out for them however. The fiscal cliff is looming and the U.S. is about to go back into recession after a false recovery in the next few months. Combine that with inevitable and much worse failures coming in the Eurozone and I have no idea why anyone would actually want that job now.
No one attracts eyeballs by saying “Well, it’s over. Everyone can stop watching us now because it’s a foregone conclusion and we’ll see you all in a few weeks…”
It’s always a horse race in the media. Clinton was going to magically beat Obama. Santorum was going to somehow run it away from Romney once they hit the right states. Then were going to get a brokered GOP convention. McCain was suddenly going to surge in Pennsylvania and Michigan in the final week and it could change… any… second… now… Romney was going to surge in Pennsylvania and Michigan in the final week and…
All ridiculous in retrospect and all were ridiculous at the time. But that’s how you get people watching night after night or hitting that refresh button or reading your magazine.
Most of my family and coworkers are deep red, as is the overall community here in suburban Atlanta.
In 1972 I lived in a small town not far from Madison Wisconsin. Last week was déjà vu: “how the Hell did that happen? Everybody hates Nixon/Obama! I sure don’t know anybody who voted for him, do you?”
We’ve returned to that level of cultural division and disconnectedness, but without as obvious a wedge issue as Vietnam.
And not just the media. Neither side wants their base to become complacent and stay home on election day. By saying its “close” even when you are confident, you get people to polls.
Anyone shocked was spending too much time listening to Dick Morris, and not enough time listening to the polls. Even my friends who were rooting for the president were nervous about the election. I was like, “Bitch, please. Don’t you read 538?”
The way I understand it is that conservatives think that the main stream media is liberal biased so they ‘adjusted’ for the reporting that Obama was leading in the polls.
I knew without a doubt that Romney would be the nominee mostly based on how he finished last time.
During the race, CNN had an interactive map that forecast states, let you manipulate states, etc. I noticed very early on that NOBODY was updating ANYTHING on the map based on polls. This lead me to seek better polling maps, which led me to Nate Silver’s 538 blog.
I trusted what he said based on all the data he collected, even when Obama failed hard on that first debate. I’d heard that some accused him of a left leaning bias, but I still felt his info was the most accurate. I won’t lie, I did find the percentage of winning stats in Obama’s favor to be reassuring.
All told, I would have been pretty shocked had Romney won. He trailed in almost every poll ever, except Rasmussen which leans right, and Rove who has a pact with Satan.
He’s good at doing things retroactively.