Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Ethan Roeder

The Independent View: A reply to Mark Pack from Obama’s Director of Data

By Ethan Roeder | Mon 19th November 2012 - 8:53 am

The Crystal Ball chart blogged by Mark Pack highlights the interesting cases of Alaska and Utah. These outliers make sense given the dynamics of the race (the large Mormon population in UT provided a boost to Romney while the absence of Sarah Palin from the ballot hurt Republican performance in AK relative to 2008). But why do we not see more turbulence in the battleground states?  Surely the gobs of money spent in these states along with the monumental ground efforts of the Obama campaign would push these states away from the crowd? The answer to this apparent disconnect …

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Posted in LDVUSA, Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

What does the data show about the Obama campaign’s use of data?

By Mark Pack | Sat 17th November 2012 - 9:50 am

So far, there has been a weird paradox at the heart of the coverage about the Obama 2012 campaign machine. On the one hand we’re all meant to be impressed by how it was based on data and analysis, honing campaign techniques and targeting activity based on what the data said. On the other hand, we’re meant to take it all on trust (or trust plus bucketloads of anecdotes; i.e. trust) that this hard-nosed, evidence-based approach to campaigning worked. Where’s the evidence that the reliance on evidence really worked?

There’s been remarkably little presented. Which is why the following graph is so

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Romney’s polling day technology meltdown: Orca

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th November 2012 - 11:53 am

The usual post-electoral defeat search for explanations and people to blame has an added edge for the Republicans after Mitt Romney’s defeat earlier this month. Not only did Romney lose, he lost in all the states that were picked as being in serious contention, the Republicans actually lost ground in the Senate (when they had hopes of making gains) and the initial voting analysis shows the Republicans with a big problem: the parts of the electorate that are growing are the parts which vote against them the most heavily.

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Posted in Campaign Corner and Online politics | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: US Elections – I’m not one to gloat, but….

By Paul Walter | Fri 9th November 2012 - 4:10 pm

I am still musing on what a wonderful night it was on Tuesday into Wednesday. I stayed up all night until I finally threw in the towel at 6.45am. It was a bit tedious at first, but it got really exciting at around 3am.

Over the last few weeks, I have been a very regular visitor to FiveThirtyEight, the home of Nate Silver. So, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that the man’s forecasts have turned out to be right.

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Mark Pack’s five lessons from the US election

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th November 2012 - 7:48 pm

I’ve long suspected that the Voice’s Mark Pack doesn’t need to sleep and his clear thinking after a long electoral night kind of backs up my theory. As my neural pathways crumble from lack of sleep, he has already put together five lessons we should learn from both Obama’s win and Romney’s loss.

He talks about the important of the non white male vote. While Romney might have done well amongst white men, he lost many other important groups of voters, including women, who make up the majority.

Mark also made a good point about the many emails which came out of …

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Posted in LibLink and Online politics | Also tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Paul Walter

#LDVUSA – Three nifty ways to help make sense of tonight’s election results

By Paul Walter | Tue 6th November 2012 - 1:53 pm

It can often be a mathematical nightmare trying to work out who’s winning as US Presidential Election night progresses. Sometimes, some poor souls even end up having to rely on David Dimbleby to explain what’s going on! Poor things!

Here are three nifty tools to help you make sense of what is happening tonight:

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Sarah Ludford MEP – ‘US Presidential Election – What will be the impact on EU/US relations?’

By NewsHound | Sat 3rd November 2012 - 5:25 pm

Over at the Endeavours Public Affairs blog, Lib Dem MEP for London Sarah Ludford looks at this Tuesday’s presidential election and what it means for Europe. Here’s an excerpt:

The Obama administration has in any case been perceived as not very interested in Europe, except as a source of financial and economic worry, with a strategic shift of US focus to the Asia-Pacific region distracting from relations with the EU. It’s a sobering cause for reflection that neither candidate has talked about Europe in their campaigns, even in the televised debate devoted to foreign affairs.

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
Paul Walter

Unravelling the US election – or not, as the case may be…

By Paul Walter | Mon 22nd October 2012 - 1:23 pm

There are just 16 days to go until the US Presidential election. Liberal Democrat Voice will be live-blogging the election results as they come in on the night. Hopefully, the count won’t go on as long as it did in 2000, or we might be in for a very long live blog.

I should declare, up front, that I am inveterately

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Paul Walter

Romney campaign: Writing the “How not to” manual

By Paul Walter | Mon 1st October 2012 - 1:24 pm

The Mitt Romney campaign in the US has an interesting approach to some of the accepted campaigning golden rules:

Before televised debates, you lower expectations of your candidate

…That way when they do reasonably well, everyone is surprised and your campaign gets a bit of a lift. So what did Romney’s campaign do? Well for weeks we have been told that Romney is closeting himself away with advisers for long sessions to prepare

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

And so the ‘Romneyshambles’ rolls on…

By Stephen Tall | Tue 18th September 2012 - 8:45 am

Here’s the video footage of US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addressing a private fundraising event:

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Posted in LDVUSA and YouTube | 8 Comments
Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes… Romney’s bought the latest gadget, but he’s forgotten to read the manual

By Tom Brake | Thu 13th September 2012 - 3:29 pm

Romney’s bought the latest gadget, but he’s forgotten to read the manual.When Obama stormed to the Presidency he did so in glorious Technicolor while his opponent was still campaigning in black and white (or at least fifty shades of grey). In contrast, Obama campaigned with panache and proved what can be achieved by harnessing the power of social media.

His victory, for me, was a Kennedy/Nixon moment – one campaign looked modern and dynamic, the other looked tired, sweaty and frankly a bit outdated. The result was rather predictable in the end. Obama triumph. Slam dunk.

But if Obama’s victory four years …

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Posted in Online politics and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 1 Comment
Mary Reid

“It’s a good thing the British do not vote in our elections” #romneyshambles

By Mary Reid | Sat 28th July 2012 - 11:25 am

Is it really possible to compare a politician unfavourably to Sarah Palin?

It’s not often that I link to the Daily Mail but this headline nailed it:

‘What a car crash… worse than Sarah Palin’: British politicians’ fury at Romney’s blunder-filled visit to London ahead of Olympics

The Democrats have gleefully issued this video. Enjoy.

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Posted in News | 5 Comments
Paul Walter

Video: The first rule of politics is broken in the most spectacular fashion

By Paul Walter | Mon 27th February 2012 - 8:54 am

That is “the first rule of politics” in the sense of the “first rule of comedy, Spike” catchphrase in the late lamented David Croft’s Hi de Hi.

In this case, the rule I am thinking of is:

Always book a venue slightly too small for your expected audience. That way the room/hall will seem full and vibrant.

LibDems love to repeat the story of the agent who put out one chair for a meeting. Three people arrived. The agent brought in two extra chairs from the next room, then released a statement to the press about the meeting saying:

Extra chairs had to be brought in.

It says something about the cack-handedness of Mitt Romney’s US Republican nomination campaign that he can obviously learn a thing or two from the humblest agent.

The Democrat National Committee have put together this video of a rather disastrous Mitt Romney “rally” in Detroit, Michigan.

It’s worth watching this video all the way through for the priceless comment from an incredulous political pundit at the end.

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Paul Walter

Opinion: Whoa! Romney isn’t meant to do this badly

By Paul Walter | Mon 20th February 2012 - 7:36 pm

I am getting worried.

A few weeks ago I was sure that Mitt Romney would win the US Republican Presidential nomination. He’d be nicely battered and bruised and the Democrats would have a fat file of YouTube and news clips to use against him (“I like firing people“/”I am not concerned about the very poor“/”Let Detroit go bankrupt” etc). But he would win.

However, it is now becoming possible that he might not win the nomination. Oh dear. Rick Santorum has been ahead in a string of national polls and is fourish points ahead in Michigan. Yes, Michigan, where …

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged | 9 Comments
Paul Walter

US Presidential election – hold onto your hats!

By Paul Walter | Tue 7th February 2012 - 3:54 pm

The 2012 US Presidential race is certainly going to be interesting. That’s for sure. There is no end of permutations, twists and turns ahead which will make very entertaining viewing for us over this side of the pond.

Every time you make a statement about the election, there are caveats and “but ifs” which follow.

It’s tempting to say that Obama is sunk because of the US economy. However, there are strong signs now of a solid recovery. Last week’s job news was very positive and polls are showing a thawing of anti-Obama feeling.

You could also say that…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Would Mitt Romney make a better President than Barack Obama?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 29th October 2011 - 8:55 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Over the last three years Obama has had to concede much of his programme to Republicans in Congress. His healthcare reforms had to be significantly watered down even before Republicans won back the House of Representatives in 2010. And the reforms themselves have since acted as a lightning rod for criticism of the President.

Obama is struggling to get the economy going again amid continued turbulence in the global economy and unemployment is staying stubbornly high despite the massive £800 billion stimulus package. …

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Posted in LDVUSA and Op-eds | Also tagged and | 8 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: God Bless America?

By Paul Walter | Tue 2nd August 2011 - 10:23 am

Well, you have to hand it to our American cousins. They can certainly do theatrics. The solving of the (self-inflicted) debt crisis has been a real nail-biter. At the tenth hour last night, there was a bi-partisan vote in the US House of Representatives, including the hugely poignant appearance of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. All House members were on their feet as she returned to Congress for the first time since being shot while carrying out a constituency surgery (as we would call it).

It was pure Hollywood. But beneath the tear-jerking choreography let’s acknowledge that it is genuinely historic for the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
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