Remarks by Ambassador David H. Thorne School of Government LUISS University
Remarks by Ambassador David H. Thorne School of Government LUISS University
November 9, 2012
Rome, LUISS University -- I’m very pleased to be here today, and let me express my appreciation to the LUISS School of Government for providing this opportunity.
The theme of the U.S. Embassy’s election night event was America Decides 2012. Well, America decided. The political scientists will spend months and even years analyzing what happened and why, but a few observations seem readily apparent.
First, despite much of the ballyhoo about this being a race that was too close to call, in the end the margin proved not to be so narrow. President Obama easily exceeded the 270 votes he needed in the Electoral College. His 303 total actually does not include the Florida results – and it appears the President will win there as well – with Florida the President would have 332 electoral votes. He won the popular vote by almost 3 million nationwide. This was a decisive victory.
Keep in mind that the Republican Party has not achieved a 303 level in the Electoral College since 1988.
Of all the states which President won in 2008, only two, Indiana and North Carolina, had not returned to his win column.
From the beginning, the national polls, which were dramatized by the media, were not particularly relevant to the actual outcome.
The “virtual dead heat” of the national pundits did not accurately reflect what was happening.
The statistical analysis of the individual states proved to be much more instructive. This emphasized once again that the U.S. presidential race is actually a simultaneous series of 51 different contests: one in each state and in the District of Columbia.
What mattered most was assessing the trends in states considered vital to the Electoral College. Understanding the Electoral College map, and building a ground game to reach out to the key constituencies in those states, was clearly the winning approach.
This was the approach adopted by several analysts – notably Nate Silver of the New York Times’ 538 blog. Through the use of substantial quantitative analysis, they tracked the prevailing attitudes of likely voters in each of the states, and simply did the Electoral College math. It allowed them to predict with remarkable accuracy the outcome which emerged on November 6.
The Obama campaign made an early decision to invest in an unprecedented organizational- and data-oriented campaign, and the results speak for themselves. The Obama campaign had 800 field offices and the Romney campaign only 250. To quote one Republican organizers in Florida, “They brought people to the polls we didn’t even know existed.”
Surprisingly, overall turnout this year was low – around 50 percent. That is almost 8 percentage points below the record turnout of 2008. Some 8.3 million more people voted for Obama in 2008 (69.5 million then vice 61.2 million this year) and 1.7 million more for McCain (59.9 million then vice 58.2 million this year).
Meanwhile, the percentage of early voting continued its upward trend: over 28 percent of Americans cast their ballots prior to Election Day, whether voting absentee or in person – up from 24.2 percent in 2008.
Most analysts believe that early voting is a factor that helps the Democratic Party, since encouraging a high turnout from its voters on Election Day is traditionally more of a struggle than it is for the Republican Party.
Indeed, early voting appears to have been a factor in several of the key battleground states, such as Iowa and Ohio. It is also noteworthy that in every battleground state except Colorado, the early voting tallies favored the Democrats.
There were eight of these so-called “battleground” states: Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire. President Obama appears to have won them all.
The role of social media in the campaign deserves highlighting. Both in fund raising and in voter outreach, social media has proven itself to be effective. For political parties in other countries – including Italy – there is a roadmap here for using the new technologies to advance your interests.
Given the impact of social media, we can foresee a future where direct elections will be more the norm. In the same fashion, as we already have seen, we can anticipate the ever growing appeal of primary elections.
President Obama won this election by putting together again a coalition of women, young people, blue collar workers, Hispanics and other minorities. It appears that economic issues were important but perhaps not as decisive as originally thought. The determination of the Republicans to reflect a conservative bent did not reward them with these groups.
So what does this mean?
1. America is changing. We are a different country than we were 25 years ago. In 1988, Michael Dukakis lost white men by 20 percent and was resoundingly defeated. This year the President lost white men by almost the same margin but attained a decisive victory.
2. The conservative agenda seems out of sync with this changing America.
3. We are still gridlocked. Democrats control the Executive Branch and the Senate. Republicans control the House. The Supreme Court has a conservative bent. We still need to come together to address serious economic challenges in the U.S., including lowering our government deficit, strengthening growth, lowering unemployment and improving our educational system, and we can’t do this without working together.
In his victory speech, President Obama concluded by noting that “we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states.” Governor Romney in his concession speech similarly declared that “our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work.” These are noble sentiments, and I hope they prevail.
Clearly it is essential for the main political parties find common ground in the center and move ahead on the daunting issues which confront the nation. We cannot possibly achieve anything constructive unless we do that.
It is my hope that the Republican Party, which spent a great deal of energy, time and money on the single goal of removing President Obama from office, will now help the nation to find common ground.
In the few days since the election, many Republicans are already urging a more tolerant and open approach to their policies and a greater willingness to compromise. It’s a promising start as we face the imminent challenge of the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
The challenges before us in the United States are familiar ones for this audience: especially how to boost economic growth and provide jobs for young people. Unfortunately, right now ours is a global community of shrinking growth. We therefore have a shared interest in continuing the economic reforms which can make growth possible.
The global challenges we face together ahead include the Eurozone economic crisis, and how we will manage in this rapidly changing globalized world. Since Italy too will soon enter an election phase, one that will be profoundly important to its future direction, I will state simply that we Americans hope that the Italy that emerges – whatever the composition of the government – will be one that hews to the path of critical reforms that it started on a year ago! It will ensure a brighter and more prosperous future for all Italians.