Bryan Fischer
White evangelicals put Barack Obama back in the White House
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Gov. Romney won 206 electoral votes on Tuesday night, and of course needed 270 to win.
The shortest path to victory for him involved just five states: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio. These five states together represent 66 electoral votes, which, if added to the Romney column, would boost him to 272 electoral votes and to the White House. If these states had gone for Romney rather than Obama, he would be President-elect Romney today.
Here's a chart, based on the electoral map I found on this morning's Fox News page. These states were all won by Obama, but not by huge margins. Here are the vote differentials, with the electoral votes each state represents listed in the first column:
State — EV — Differential
Colorado — 9 — 113,099
Florida — 29 — 47,013
Nevada — 6 — 66,379
New Hampshire — 4 — 40,421
Ohio — 18 — 100,114
Total — 66 — 367,026
So Romney only needed an additional 367,027 strategically placed votes to win the presidency, out of a total of 118,512,450 votes cast.
And if you look at this another way, he only needed to flip 183,514 votes to win. That is, if he had been able to convince that many voters in these states to vote for him rather than Obama, he'd be the winner, since each flip would take one vote away from Obama and award it to Romney, in essence a two-vote swing.
Now 183,514 votes is just .00154 of all votes cast in this election. So for a little more than 1/10 of one percent of all votes cast, for just 1.5 votes out of every 1000 votes cast, the GOP today could be sitting in the catbird's seat and planning on how best to dismantle ObamaCare.
This means that this election was very close, closer than you might think by just looking at the overall raw numbers.
It's possible that Romney's Mormonism may have played a material role in the narrow loss in these states, since some evangelicals, who comprised 26% of the electorate and voted for Romney 79-21, might have been inclined to vote for him but for the fact that they believe Mormonism to be a cult and could not bring themselves to overcome that theological divide at the ballot box.
If 26% of the electorate consisted of white evangelicals, they cast 30,813,237 of the 118,512,450 votes cast. Of those 30 million evangelical votes, 24.3 million went to Gov. Romney and and 6.5 million went to the president. The total vote differential between President Obama and Gov. Romney was just 2,897,472 (60,782,354 to 57,884,882).
Whether Mormonism played a role, or whether other factors were at work, over six million evangelicals found a way to vote for a self-identified Christian who nevertheless believes in infanticide and sodomy-based marriage. If just 25% of these evangelicals had voted for Gov. Romney instead, Romney would have won the popular vote by over 350,000 votes (59.51 million to 59.16 million), and likely would have won the election to boot.
Thus it's no exaggeration to say that white evangelicals put Barack Obama back in the White House.
Be that as it may, conservatives have no reason to throw themselves off the ledge. The more conservative of the two candidates missed the White House by less than 200,000 votes. Certainly those votes — and a genuine conservative candidate — can and will be found between now and 2016.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
November 8, 2012
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Gov. Romney won 206 electoral votes on Tuesday night, and of course needed 270 to win.
The shortest path to victory for him involved just five states: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio. These five states together represent 66 electoral votes, which, if added to the Romney column, would boost him to 272 electoral votes and to the White House. If these states had gone for Romney rather than Obama, he would be President-elect Romney today.
Here's a chart, based on the electoral map I found on this morning's Fox News page. These states were all won by Obama, but not by huge margins. Here are the vote differentials, with the electoral votes each state represents listed in the first column:
State — EV — Differential
Colorado — 9 — 113,099
Florida — 29 — 47,013
Nevada — 6 — 66,379
New Hampshire — 4 — 40,421
Ohio — 18 — 100,114
Total — 66 — 367,026
So Romney only needed an additional 367,027 strategically placed votes to win the presidency, out of a total of 118,512,450 votes cast.
And if you look at this another way, he only needed to flip 183,514 votes to win. That is, if he had been able to convince that many voters in these states to vote for him rather than Obama, he'd be the winner, since each flip would take one vote away from Obama and award it to Romney, in essence a two-vote swing.
Now 183,514 votes is just .00154 of all votes cast in this election. So for a little more than 1/10 of one percent of all votes cast, for just 1.5 votes out of every 1000 votes cast, the GOP today could be sitting in the catbird's seat and planning on how best to dismantle ObamaCare.
This means that this election was very close, closer than you might think by just looking at the overall raw numbers.
It's possible that Romney's Mormonism may have played a material role in the narrow loss in these states, since some evangelicals, who comprised 26% of the electorate and voted for Romney 79-21, might have been inclined to vote for him but for the fact that they believe Mormonism to be a cult and could not bring themselves to overcome that theological divide at the ballot box.
If 26% of the electorate consisted of white evangelicals, they cast 30,813,237 of the 118,512,450 votes cast. Of those 30 million evangelical votes, 24.3 million went to Gov. Romney and and 6.5 million went to the president. The total vote differential between President Obama and Gov. Romney was just 2,897,472 (60,782,354 to 57,884,882).
Whether Mormonism played a role, or whether other factors were at work, over six million evangelicals found a way to vote for a self-identified Christian who nevertheless believes in infanticide and sodomy-based marriage. If just 25% of these evangelicals had voted for Gov. Romney instead, Romney would have won the popular vote by over 350,000 votes (59.51 million to 59.16 million), and likely would have won the election to boot.
Thus it's no exaggeration to say that white evangelicals put Barack Obama back in the White House.
Be that as it may, conservatives have no reason to throw themselves off the ledge. The more conservative of the two candidates missed the White House by less than 200,000 votes. Certainly those votes — and a genuine conservative candidate — can and will be found between now and 2016.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
