History buffs will remember the iconic and historically wrong 1948 headline “Dewey Wins!” in the presidential race between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. A closer look inside the Romney campaign only days prior to his humongous loss shows an amazing correlation between Mitt Romney and Thomas Dewey.
Like Dewey, Romney was convinced he would win. But how did he and his team of advisers get it so horrifically wrong?
In a revealing new article from The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, Romney’s closest advisers and pollsters were living in some sort of fantasy bubble world that did not even come close to resembling reality. They were hell-bent on believing that their poll numbers alone were correct, and that all others, including numbers from Nate Silver (who predicted an Obama win months prior and almost down to the exact number) favored Democrats and were wrong. They were also convinced that Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory was a fluke that couldn’t be reproduced in 2012, and that young and minority voters had lost favor and would simply not turn out for the president in such record fashion again.
The Romney campaign’s internal poll numbers were so horrifically wrong, Romney never bothered to write a concession speech. So assured of a resounding win, Romney also paid for an elaborate fireworks display that was to light up Boston Harbor at the news of his election. His campaign even published (accidentally) a transition website, which disclosed intricate plans on transitioning from an Obama administration to a Romney White House. Oh, the shame!
According to the article, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who famously said “We won’t let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” conducted internal polling for the Romney campaign. Based on poll numbers from the weekend prior to the election, Romney believed he had cemented at least 267 out of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. Republican efforts to suppress the vote in Florida and thereby limit minority (Democratic) turn out there, as well as ground efforts in Ohio had the Romney camp counting their chickens before they were hatched.
Romney believed the election would come down to the states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Insiders within the campaign had convinced the candidate that he was only 3 points behind President Obama in Pennsylvania and only 2 points behind in Ohio, numbers Romney was convinced were surmountable. Romney entered election week with a confident swagger that even took him to Pennsylvania, believing that he could easily wrest that too, away from President Obama.
When it was confirmed that President Obama won reelection with 332 electoral votes and that he won every single swing state (Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin) with the exception of North Carolina, Romney and his advisers were shell shocked. This final result did not match their version of reality they had somehow convinced themselves was inevitable. How could this be possible?
An analysis from the article “Why Romney Never Saw It Coming,” published by Slate.com on November 9th, confirmed that Romney’s math was doomed since his team over-counted Republicans in their polling and grossly underestimated Obama voter turnout and enthusiasm.
“When anyone raised the idea that public polls were showing a close race, the campaign’s pollster said the poll modeling was flawed and everyone moved on. Internally, the campaign’s own polling—tweaked to represent their view of the electorate, with fewer Democrats—showed a steady uptick for Romney since the first debate. Even on the morning of the election, Romney’s senior advisers weren’t close to hedging. They said he was going to win ‘decisively,’” said Slate’s John Dickerson.
The only thing decisive from that night was President Obama’s huge victory — and the Republican Party’s unexpected death while in the hands of Mitt Romney.
And just like Thomas Dewey, Mitt Romney disappeared into oblivion…
