If you really want to understand how to fix something, you first have to take a realistic look at what is wrong with it.

After the 2004 election, Howard Dean wondered how the Democrats would reconnect with men who flew Confederate flags and had guns in their pickup trucks.  They didn’t, but have since won two presidential elections.   After 2008, the GOP was filled with hand-wringing about connecting with minority voters, but it managed to win the greatest congressional swing election in generations in 2010.

In the wake of Obama’s re-election, there is a lot of hand-wringing going on in the GOP about making changes, but not enough clear-eyed assessments of exactly what went wrong and needs to be fixed.

There are three elements to any campaign: message, money and organization.  While money was obviously not a problem, attested to by the good Christmases the children of TV station owners and media consultants are about to have, our message and organization didn’t make the grade.

The decision was made to just focus on the economy to the exclusion of almost everything else, resulting in our philosophy not being effectively communicated and connected to the everyday lives of Americans.  read more »

The 2012 elections are over, the analysis has begun, and there’s plenty of fault to find.   Most of my blog posts this year have had an election theme, but from a conservative Christian point of view.  I am disappointed with the results but not disheartened as a Christian.  Jesus Christ was my Lord and Savior before the elections, and He is today, and will be forever.

From a statistical standpoint, there is one area that I will investigate fully in the coming days, and that is what affect the many other Presidential candidates on the ballot made in the outcome of the election.  Here is an early example.   I live in Florida, one of the major swing states.  As of about 5 PM this evening, Florida’s results still were not final.  Obama had a lead of only 49,000 votes at this point.  I totaled up the other candidates on the ballot, which none of them had any chance of winning whatsoever, and their votes total was 70,000!  In every election I’ve witnessed, the throw away votes overwhelming benefit the Democrats.  So, the math is easy here, Obama isn’t winning the state of Florida as much as the votes for the third party candidates has given him this state.  Add the vast majority of those 70,000 votes to Romney’s total, and Romney wins easily!  In the coming week or so, I am going to total up all of the key swing states and see if this thought process actually determined President Obama’s victory.   read more »