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It's an unsubstantiated statement to say "Trump being stronger than Romney." At this point in 2012, Romney had the nomination sown up.
Yep. if anything the opposite is true. Romney was the stronger candidate.
Romney locked up the nomination earlier than Trump will, AND Romney had the full backing of the party and party insiders. Romney was FAR better funded than Trump as well- he had been locking up money from party insiders and SuperPACs for years to ensure he wouldn't have to spend any of his own dollars on the race as he did in 2008. Trump is a billionaire but absolutely does not have hundreds of millions in liquid cash ready to throw at the race at a moment's notice.
Romney was also going up against an Obama that was FAR weaker than Hillary will be this year- in 2012 it was far from certain the economy would recover to the extent it has, and Obamacare was still largely untested. This year Hillary is running as the successor to the Obama administration and will be touting both as achievements, not liabilities.
In addition to THAT, democrats and moderates are not happy at ALL about the obstruction of the senate in regards to the Supreme Court, and NC has the unpopular Richard Burr currently up for re-election. Expect NC in particular (along with PA, NH, IA, AZ, OH, and a few others) to get absolutely hammered with advertising on this making it a presidential AND senate AND supreme court race to turn out the base.
Trump also does not have the debate skills that Romney does- He handily defeated Obama in the first of three debates, and narrowly lost the second thanks to a gaffe made by his prep team that Obama took advantage of (the "please proceed governor" moment). No one in their right mind thinks Trump is going to be able to perform as well against Hillary who is by any indication as good or better than Obama is in a debate (she beat him consistently in debates in 08) and managed to embarrass nearly the entire republican senate in the day long Benghazi hearings earlier this year. ESPECIALLY since Trump is notorious for NOT preparing for debates and just winging it. He's managed to get by with a republican audience and opponents but the same tactics are absolutely not going to work as well with independents and moderates.
Trump has his fans but Romney was in a better position. Expecting him to outdo Mitt is crazy talk.
Another factor to consider is that Romney couldn't draw independents and democrats yet he still won here. Turning NC blue is all about turnout. Clinton only has a chance if she can somehow get the black voter turnout that Obama got, otherwise 2012 showed us that the GOP can win NC with just strong white male support.
There are many Republicans who are not thrilled with Trump, who will either vote for Clinton or stay home.
This is all demographics. Clinton is strong among minorities and women. Trump is weak among minorities and women. Unless something changes, it's nearly impossible to win with just the white male vote.
Well. It's been close to 100 years since that statement was true.
As I've said before, I don't hold much stock in a poll that predicts an election that is to take place 8 months from now. However as a NC resident, I'll be surprised if Clinton manages a win here.
Yep. if anything the opposite is true. Romney was the stronger candidate.
Romney locked up the nomination earlier than Trump will, AND Romney had the full backing of the party and party insiders. Romney was FAR better funded than Trump as well- he had been locking up money from party insiders and SuperPACs for years to ensure he wouldn't have to spend any of his own dollars on the race as he did in 2008. Trump is a billionaire but absolutely does not have hundreds of millions in liquid cash ready to throw at the race at a moment's notice.
Romney was also going up against an Obama that was FAR weaker than Hillary will be this year- in 2012 it was far from certain the economy would recover to the extent it has, and Obamacare was still largely untested. This year Hillary is running as the successor to the Obama administration and will be touting both as achievements, not liabilities.
In addition to THAT, democrats and moderates are not happy at ALL about the obstruction of the senate in regards to the Supreme Court, and NC has the unpopular Richard Burr currently up for re-election. Expect NC in particular (along with PA, NH, IA, AZ, OH, and a few others) to get absolutely hammered with advertising on this making it a presidential AND senate AND supreme court race to turn out the base.
Trump has his fans but Romney was in a better position. Expecting him to outdo Mitt is crazy talk.
As an aside, I remember the 2012 promise that Romney made: "I will lower unemployment to 6% by the end of my first term." Obama did that by October 2014.
First, a caveat:
I don't put much stock in general election polls in the midst of primary season.
That said, this isn't surprising. After all, Senator Obama won the state in 2008 and although Governor Romney won it in 2012, he only did so by 2%. But looking deeper, we can see that North Carolina is slowly becoming more blue relative to the national electorate.
Here's what I mean:
In 2008, Senator Obama won the national vote by 7.2% and the North Carolina vote by 0.3%. His national performance was 6.9% better than his North Carolina performance.
In 2012, President Obama won a national margin of 3.9%, while his performance in North Carolina was -2.0%. That means he fared 5.9% better nationally than he did in North Carolina.
See? Relative to the National electorate, North Carolina moved 1.0% in the direction of Team Blue. (aside: run the 2008 and 2012 numbers for neighboring Virginia and you'll see the exact same dynamic)
Basically, North Carolina is where Virginia was about 10 years ago - still red but moving inexorably blueward.
As an aside, I remember the 2012 promise that Romney made: "I will lower unemployment to 6% by the end of my first term." Obama did that by October 2014.
Yep. 6% was seen as a realistic target for unemployment that would signal economic recovery. If anyone had promised we'd be at 4.9% by 2016 they would have been called insane- no one thought we'd be able to sustain that kind of growth, that's how shaky things were by that year. It's the height of revisionism that the current unemployment numbers aren't "real unemployment" because we've long since passed that target.
Newt Gingrich was also campaigning promising $2.50 gasoline and everyone thought he was a crazy man. It's incredible how fast some things can change.
As an aside, I remember the 2012 promise that Romney made: "I will lower unemployment to 6% by the end of my first term." Obama did that by October 2014.
And Gingrich said he would get gasoline back to two bucks and we all laughed and said that was impossible.
Yes, I remember all the claims from the right that Obama's "tree-hugging policies" were going to send gasoline prices skyward.
The truth is that what the President does has little to no effect on gas prices. We're below $2.00 a gallon, but Newt is still crazy. Nothing he could have done would have gotten us here.
We're at where we are now (it's about 1.99 here in PA) largely because Saudi Arabia is intentionally flooding the market with cheap oil to destroy US and Canadian shale, AND China's economic growth numbers turned out to be fraudulent (as with just about every goddamned thing China does).
Neither of these things is expected to resolve quickly, if at all. Speculators are running as far away from oil as they possibly can and investing elsewhere. Without both we wouldn't be looking at gas anywhere near that level that it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seweryn_Szeliga
And Bernie Sanders Leads Trump NATIONWIDE
In the current climate a potted plant could defeat Trump nationwide, but Bernie wouldn't do as well as numbers suggest. He's yet to see any attacks at all from the GOP because having him in the race as long as possible to damage Clinton and waste money helps and not hurts them. Clinton can't/won't attack him in the way the GOP will as that would only hurt her since her base is on the left, not the right.
If by some miracle Clinton went to jail and Sanders won the nomination, he'd be looking at an onslaught of negative advertising the likes of which he's never seen- these are the people that took the largely bulletproof Obama of 08 and managed to turn him into a Kenyan muslim terrorist sympathizer with a fake birth certificate to 45% of the American public. a third of republicans STILL think Obama's birth certificate is fake even today- which shows how effective the GOP noise machine actually is.
Making this worse, Sanders refuses to use a SuperPAC out of principle and would be unable to respond to the onslaught. Obama and Hillary at least realize the playing field has to be level and will use them, even if Citizens United was a terrible ruling.
Last edited by Burger Fan; 03-23-2016 at 08:11 AM..
Looks like there might be a chance NC turns blue again this year. Hillary got 616k votes in the primaries versus Trump's 458k.
and how much competition did she have? Will NC go Blue, at this stage which states go which way really depends on who actually gets out and votes. Of course you are assuming Trump has it locked up it sounds: not so fast, there is probably not more than a 50% chance he will get the nomination.
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Will NC go Blue, at this stage which states go which way really depends on who actually gets out and votes. Of course you are assuming Trump has it locked up it sounds: not so fast, there is probably not more than a 50% chance he will get the nomination.
