{"id":49793,"date":"2012-11-13T21:08:55","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T02:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2012\/11\/13\/lessons-from-the-2012-election\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:48:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:48:06","slug":"lessons-from-the-2012-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/politics\/2012\/11\/13\/lessons-from-the-2012-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from the 2012 Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>By Andrew Kohut,\u00a0Pew Research Center President<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>November 14, 2012<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Postelection talk of \u201clessons learned\u201d is \u00adoften exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base\u2014notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans\u2014turned out for him. Second, that the growing size of these voting blocs represents a decisive challenge for the Republican party.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both points are true, but most observers are overstating the gravity of the GOP\u2019s problem. In particular, they are paying too little attention to how weak a candidate Mitt Romney was, and how much that hurt Republican prospects.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is what the exit poll found. Mr. Romney\u2019s personal image took a hard hit during the primary campaign and remained weak on election day. Just 47% of exit-poll respondents viewed him favorably, compared with 53% for Mr. Obama. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Romney\u2019s favorable ratings were among the lowest recorded for a presidential candidate in the modern era. A persistent problem was doubt about his empathy with the average voter. By 53% to 43%, exit-poll respondents said that Mr. Obama was more in touch than Mr. Romney with people like themselves.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mr. Romney was never fully embraced by Republicans themselves, which may have inhibited the expected strong Republican turnout. Pew\u2019s election-weekend survey found Mr. Romney with fewer strong supporters (33%) than Mr. Obama (39%). Similarly, a much greater percentage of Obama supporters (80%) than Romney supporters (60%) told Pew that they were voting for their candidate rather than against his opponent.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887323894704578113231375465160.html\">Continue reading at WSJ.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Andrew Kohut,\u00a0Pew Research Center President November 14, 2012 Postelection talk of \u201clessons learned\u201d is \u00adoften exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012. A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base\u2014notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans\u2014turned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sub_headline":"by Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center <Br\/> Special to the Wall Street Journal ","sub_title":"by Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center <Br\/> Special to the Wall Street Journal ","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_api_pending":"","apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_hidden":false,"relatedPosts":[],"reportMaterials":[],"multiSectionReport":[],"package_parts__enabled":false,"package_parts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[44,57,50],"tags":[],"bylines":[],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"level_of_effort":[],"primary_audience":[],"information_type":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[458],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[],"research-teams":[520],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-49793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2012","category-political-civic-engagement","category-voter-participation","formats-report","research-teams-politics"],"label":false,"post_parent":0,"word_count":266,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/politics\/2012\/11\/13\/lessons-from-the-2012-election\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"report_materials":"","report_pagination":{"current_post":null,"next_post":null,"previous_post":null,"pagination_items":[]},"parent_info":{"parent_title":"Lessons from the 2012 Election","parent_id":49793},"materialsOrdered":[],"chaptersOrdered":[],"partsOrdered":[],"partsEnabled":false,"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Lessons from the 2012 Election","description":"By Andrew Kohut,\u00a0Pew Research Center President November 14, 2012 Postelection talk of \u201clessons learned\u201d is \u00adoften exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012. A week after President Obama&hellip;","og_title":"Lessons from the 2012 Election","og_description":"","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{"prc-image-alt-text":{"status":"complete","message":"No image blocks in content.","data":null},"prc-about-this-research":{"status":"incomplete","message":"Add an \"About this research\" details block.","data":null},"prc-paragraph-count":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 8 paragraphs.","data":{"count":8}},"prc-internal-link":{"status":"incomplete","message":"Add at least one internal link.","data":{"count":0}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112265,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49793\/revisions\/112265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"level_of_effort","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/level_of_effort?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"primary_audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary_audience?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"information_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/information_type?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=49793"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=49793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}