http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/
There's been a lot of surprise for the right wing regarding Romney's loss. This article does a decent job of explaining why and what assumptions lead to the anticipation of a Romney victory.
Two page article, by the way. It's easy to miss.
Post-script edit: This is gonna be rambly as fuck and mostly BSed, but it's late and thats the fun of politics. Whatever.Said it before, but when the words "Universal, systematic polling bias" appear on your victory plan, you have to know that something is up.
Hindsight is 20/20, and these people are way smarter than I am, but sometimes things seem a lot more simple afterwards. They assumed voter turnout would go down, which was true! But they also assumed turnout among all groups that normally vote democrat would
proportionally go down as well, which they were just dead wrong on. There was evidence to suggest that might be the case to some degree, but not to the levels they seem to have planned/banked on. They were so certain of this they based their entire strategy around it, which is just... not sound.
The article, in its fair-handed attempt to explain their shock, paints a worse picture of the campaign than any partisen mockery. Optimistic views and optimal outcomes are one thing, but the Romney camp's path to victory almost seems delusional now. There's no questioning that certain swing states could have swung the other way. Florida in particular. But to include in their
expected outcome the bucking of turnout trends that have been building in the last 2 Presidential electoral cycles is just silly. The only true outlier they really should have been broadsided by was the Cuban population going against their traditional Republican leanings for the first time ever (While the hispanic vote overall in Florida went for Obama in 2008, the Cuban population in Florida voted McCain over Obama... by the smallest margin ever to that point). Instead, they scratch their heads about how the youth vote, which while numerically down actually went up a tenth of a percentage point proportionally (at least, last time I checked the numbers), they scratch their head over the "minority" vote maintaining its 2008 levels, and envisioned a landslide where they were carried into the office on the backs of their ever-shrinking (proportionally) base magically appearing in record numbers in states where there were never really enough of them to carry the day without also getting the independants on your side anyway.
I don't think this was a mobilization of the base thing, I think it's more that the numbers just aren't there anymore no matter how many of them you mobilize (on a national level). The rise in the youth vote and minority vote have overtaken them. Punditry can sometimes get things right: the most common comment after the election was over was that they Republicans will need to learn how to be more inclusive if they want to win in future elections. National politics are changing, and while they can still win their states, they've lost touch with how to win the country. Along similar lines, that really has less to do with Democrats than the process itself becoming detrimental to the Republicans. The primary for the right destroys them. Obama and Hillary damn near killed each other in theirs in 2008, but it left Obama nowhere near as poorly situated in the general as McCain and Romney were after their base got done with them. It'll continue to be that way as the Republican party goes through its "identity crisis" as the party slips more right. It's weird. I guess that since the Democratic party is used to being fractured anyway they're used to dealing with the resulting situation of both sides becoming more partisen.
Maybe watching Fox News on Election Night was more telling than we thought. Maybe it really was the party finally realizing that the country has changed so much, so quickly that they'll have to come up with a new strategy. I'd probably be scared and speechless too, if I were in their shoes. But honestly? They should have seen this coming. It's their job to. Sure, you can't be perfect, can't win them all. Bringing it home to Romney's camp, waiting it out was the right thing to do too. But being so confident and, I'll say it, ignorant that you don't even have a concession speech prepared? Please.
