The Official 2012 Presidential Election Thread

[Captain Crunch]

It's crazy that he hasn't dropped out yet.

KEEP HOPE ALIVE
Besides me, who else will probably sit out this election?

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

LOL, Obama is going to get exposed in the debates. Someone will finally be able to call him out for the failure of his policies because Lord knows the media won't do it.

what are these failures? and what would you do differently?

All I hear these republicans (fox news) say is how he failed. Well, I want specifics and what you would change.

 

[jaguar paw]

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Interesting...

When it Comes to Politics, Are We More Racist Than We Think? | Work + Money - Yahoo! Shine

People are usually reluctant to admit their real feelings in surveys, but there's no doubt that our experiences and our prejudices play a part in the way we vote. In order to figure out whether racial bias affected Barack Obama's results in the 2008 presidential election, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, passed over easy-to-manipulate surveys and looked at data from another source: online searches.

When most people are searching for information online, they're likely to be alone and less likely to censor their thoughts, he explains. "You may have typed things into Google that you would hesitate to admit in polite company," he writes in a New York Times article. "I certainly have. The majority of Americans have as well: We Google the word 'porn' more often than the word 'weather'."

He chose a common racial insult that starts with "N" and looked for searches that used the singular and plural forms of the word. "The most common searches including the epithet… return websites with derogatory material about African-Americans," he writes in his study. "The top hits for the top racially charged searches are nearly all textbook examples of antilocution, a majority group's sharing stereotype-based jokes using coarse language outside a minority group's presence."

That held true for searches from 2004 through 2007 (searches for "n**ga" led mostly to rap lyrics, which he disregarded for this study). "I used data from 2004 to 2007 because I wanted a measure not directly influenced by feelings toward Mr. Obama," he writes in the New York Times.

But from 2008 on, he discovered, "Obama" was one of the most prevalent search terms in racially tinged online searches.

Related: Obama's team suggests racism behind proposed Write ad campaign

After gathering information on the racially charged search queries, Stephens-Davidowitz took a look at voting data from around the country and compared each area's 2008 results, when Obama was running for president, to voting results from 2004, when all of the candidates were white.

Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz's research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama's totals. "In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor," he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.

"The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote," Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. "This implies racial animus gave Obama's opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide."

"Any votes Obama gained due to his race in the general election were not nearly enough to outweigh the cost of racial animus, meaning race was a large net negative for Obama," he adds.

The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.

Even if states that are considered fairly liberal, racism is prevalent enough in certain areas to put the entire state high up on the list. "Other areas with high percentages included western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi," Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his New York Times article.

The 10 states with the fewest racially charged searches were Utah, Hawaii, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Washington DC, Minnesota, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming.

What does this mean for this year's contest? "Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate's winning the popular vote by a third," Stephens-Davidowitz explains. "Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania."

 

[MikelArteta]

Very interesting indeed.

It's laughable that whites still harbor so much animosity to Obama based on race acting like he gave blacks reparations or somethjng

 

[88m3]

White people hate blacks there is nothing that will ever change that.



A world without whites inshallah.

 

[jerniebert]

Its sad to believe that in 2012 so many people are still racially driven. They should be embarrassed of themselves.

 

[No1]

I have to say, this supposed "mistake" by Obama has been highly overstated.

 

[Rarely-Wrong Liggins]

VVD you still think Obama has this election in the bag?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

VVD you still think Obama has this election in the bag?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2

Of course.

RealClearPolitics - 2012 Election Maps - Electoral Map



Romney would have to almost run the table in the swing states. It won't happen. I hope he loses the popular vote and wins the electoral vote just to see 'em get mad.

 

[Serious]

It won't happen. I hope he loses the popular vote and wins the electoral vote just to see 'em get mad.

careful, they might try to demand a recount........


See this is why I can't respect conservatives. They don't even fully know what they're fighting against. All they know is is black, which means he must be inferior, despite his credentials, sohh everything he stands for is taken with a grain of salt..........



This c@c (excuse my language) couldn't even spell socialism.

sohh much fail, @ a gay conservative

 

[THEANGEL&THEGAMBLER]

Romney would have to almost run the table in the swing states. It won't happen. I hope he loses the popular vote and wins the electoral vote just to see 'em get mad.

and he cant even take advantage of a rare Obama Gaffe
Too many unforced errors!

Mitt Romney: We don’t need more cops, firefighters or teachers - The Plum Line - The Washington Post

 

[Rarely-Wrong Liggins]

Obama campaign sees red in May money totals | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

President Barack Obama's campaign spent more than it took in over the month of May despite his frenetic fundraising schedule, leaving the massive operation with just shy of $110 million dollars cash on hand against $115 million one month earlier.

The embattled incumbent scooped up a hair over $39 million dollars but spent nearly $44.6 million, according to a formal filing with the Federal Election Commission. A more detailed breakdown can be found here.

The figures followed the release of data showing Republican standard-bearer Mitt Romney outraised Obama and Democrats in May—the first time the former Massachusetts governor topped the president in the 2012 cycle.

A senior Obama campaign strategist, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said earlier in the day that Romney would best his earlier total — and predicted that the Republican's hauls, plus unrestricted super-PAC cash, would mean "we're going to be the first incumbent outspent."The super-PAC phenomenon has been a recurring source of handwringing at Obama HQ in Chicago. Aides say they worry that those deep-pockets will unleash an unprecedented blitz of negative ads—and that comparable entities on the Democratic side lack the cash to counter effectively.

"I think [Romney's] going to have a $100 million month this month between he and the RNC," the strategist said. "I think you are going to see another huge month from him."

"Given Sen. Kerry outraised Bush two to one in the first couple of months after he won the nomination, I think Romney is going to continue to have big months. Combined with that with the super PAC stuff, we're going to be the first incumbent outspent," the strategist said.

Not to mention that Eric Holder situation.

People still think that Obama is guaranteed a second term. I've never thought that and now it's getting real shaky. Those gay and immigrant concessions better pay off in November.

 

[Darts]

Nah he's good.

He lucked out and got a dreadful opponent.

 

[Kings County]

Nah he's good.

He lucked out and got a dreadful opponent.