¿QUIÉN ACERTÓ?

¿QUÉ CONSULTORA LE ACERTÓ AL RESULTADO DE LAS ELECCIONES PRESIDENCIALES DE EEUU?

http://www.rove.com/files/2008-PresPollsterAccuracy.pdf

KARL ROVE acerca de las elecciones en USA 2008

How the President-Elect Did It
The new voters changed the game.
By KARL ROVE




Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
Puedes leer más artículos de Karl Rove en su web http://www.rove.com/ o comunicarte con el autor al correo Karl@Rove.com

Intense and gripping, the 2008 election was also historic. The son of a Kenyan immigrant and an American mother has risen to the presidency of history's most powerful nation. Who was not moved by the sight of Jesse Jackson standing silently among strangers with tears streaming down his face as he thought of a long journey towards equality and acceptance?

So how did Barack Obama win?

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  Some of it was fortune: He was a fresh, gifted, charismatic leader who emerged at just the moment that people yearned for something entirely new.
  


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  Some of it was circumstance: The October Surprise arrived a month early and framed the election in the best possible way for Mr. Obama (and the worst possible way for John McCain).
  


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  Some of it was thoughtful positioning: His themes of bipartisanship and a readiness to tackle the country's pressing challenges were enormously attractive, especially when delivered with hope and optimism.
  


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  And some of it was planning and execution: The Obama campaign, led by the two Davids -- Plouffe, the manager, and Axelrod, the strategist -- carefully built a powerful army of persuasion aimed at accomplishing two tasks.

A candidate can improve his party's performance by getting additional people out to vote and persuading people inclined to support the other party to cross over. The first yields an additional vote; the second is worth two, the one a candidate gets and the one he takes away from his opponent.
So the two Davids registered millions of voters in states the Obama campaign picked as battlegrounds, especially where there were many heretofore-disinterested African Americans and younger Democrats. Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod understood that over the last 28 years only 11 of 20 eligible Americans on average cast a presidential ballot. They focused on registering and motivating the other nine who don't usually vote. This decision, perhaps more than any other, allowed Mr. Obama to win such previously red states as Virginia, Indiana, Colorado and Nevada. It forced Mr. McCain to spend most of the fall on defense, unable to take once-reliably Republican states for granted.
Second, Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod pried away from the GOP ranks small but decisive slices of the Republican presidential coalition. We can't be precise, because for the third election in a row the exit polls were trash. The raw numbers forecast an 18-point Obama win, news organizations who underwrote the poll arbitrarily dialed it down to a 10-point Obama edge, and the actual margin was six.
But we do know President-elect Obama ran better among frequent churchgoers (perhaps getting 10 points more than John Kerry did), independents (perhaps five points more than Kerry and eight points more than Al Gore), Hispanics and white men. He even made special appeals to gun owners and sent his wife to cultivate military families. This allowed him to carry previously red states like Florida, New Mexico and Iowa.
This combination helped Senator Obama run four points better nationally than John Kerry did in 2004 and 2.5 points better than Al Gore did in 2000. These small changes on the margin meant all the difference between winning and losing.
It is a tribute to his skills that Mr. Obama, the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, won in a country that remains center-right. Most pre-election polls and the wiggly exits indicate America remains ideologically stable, with 34% of voters saying they are conservative -- unchanged from 2004. Moderates went to 44% from 45% of the electorate, while liberals went to 22% from 21%.
Mr. Obama understood this. He downplayed calls for retreat from Iraq, instead emphasizing toughness on Afghanistan, even threatening an ally, Pakistan, if it didn't help more to exterminate al Qaeda. Mr. Obama campaigned on "a tax cut for 95% of Americans," while attacking "government-run health care" as "extreme" and his opponent's proposals as hidden tax increases.
What Mr. Obama and his team achieved was impressive. But in 75 days comes the hard part. We saw a glimpse of the challenge Tuesday night. The president-elect's speech, while graceful and at times uplifting, was light when it comes to an agenda. That may have been appropriate, but it also continued a pattern.
Many Americans were drawn to Mr. Obama because they saw in him what they wanted to see. He became a large vessel into which voters placed their hopes. This can lead to disappointment and regret. What of the woman who, in the closing days of the campaign, rejoiced that Mr. Obama would pay for her gas and take care of her mortgage, tasks that no president can shoulder?
The country voted for change Tuesday. But the precise direction of that change remains unclear. Mr. Obama's victory was personal rather than philosophical. The soaring hopes and vague incantations of "change" that have characterized the last 21 months were the poetry phase; a prosaic phase is about to begin.
This should be an interesting few years. Let every American hope for the success of the new president and the country we all love.

AN ELECTION THAT THE REPUBLICANS NEEDED TO LOSE — GOOD LUCK OBAMA.

By DICK MORRIS Published on TheHill.com on November 5, 2008

(El resaltado en cursiva es de Tayllerand dice)

If ever there was an election that was not worth winning, it was the contest of 2008. While it was hard-fought on both sides, had McCain won, it might have spelled the end of the Republican Party. As it is, the party is well-situated to come back in 2010 and in 2012, if it learns the lessons of this year.Simply put, all hell is about to break loose in the markets and the economy. The mortgage crisis will likely be followed by defaults in credit card debt, student loans and car loans. We will probably be set for two years of zero growth, according to economists with whom I talk. And the federal efforts to protect the nation from the worst of the recession will probably lead to huge budget deficits and resulting inflation. We are in for stagflation that could last for years.Had McCain won, he would be the latter-day Hoover, blamed for the disaster that unfolded on his watch. Now it is Obama’s problem. With the Republicans suffering a wipeout in congressional elections (although not as bad as they feared), the ball is now squarely in the Democratic court. Good luck!

If Obama raises taxes, the situation could get even worse. With a liberal Congress on his hands, he will be constrained to move to the left, if he needs any pushing. When Clinton was elected in 1992, the Democrats in control of Congress gave him a clear message: Either you govern within the four walls of the Democratic caucus or you won’t get our support. Crossing the aisle to get Republican votes, even including the GOP in negotiations, was a no-no for which the president would pay dearly if he transgressed.The result was predictable. Moderate initiatives like welfare reform were scrapped, the Congress passed tax hikes and legislation became festooned with liberal amendments. Faced with the need to round up every last vote in the Senate and House Democratic caucuses, Clinton had no choice but to load up conservative bills like an anti-crime measure with liberal pork (like a provision for midnight basketball courts in urban areas) to get unanimous caucus backing.Obama will have to move left to appease his caucus. He will become their hostage, and they his jailers.This dynamic will produce extreme-left-wing governance, which the Republicans can blame for the continuation of the recession and for any worsening. The party will recover, fed by anger at Obama’s policies, and will emerge from this defeat stronger than ever.But the Republicans must learn the lesson of MoveOn.org. Founded in the bleak days of the Clinton impeachment, MoveOn developed a grassroots Internet base. Building up its e-list of activists and contributors, MoveOn laid the basis for the incredible Internet appeal of the Obama campaign. At last count, Obama has 4.5 million donors, most online.Conservatives cannot count on the Republican Party to fight their battles for them, and certainly cannot count on them to win. The right needs to develop cyber-roots conservative organizations to rival the power of groups like MoveOn.org. The stellar efforts of NewsMax.com and its ally, GOPtrust.com, illustrate the power of such efforts. Together, these groups raised $10 million for an independent expenditure on media in swing states featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American bombast.And their efforts worked.Virtually all the polls agreed that Obama would win 52-53 percent of the vote, but the surveys varied in the amount of undecideds they found. On Election Day, virtually every undecided voter went to McCain, and Obama’s final vote share was no more and no less than the 52-53 percent the surveys had predicted. This unanimity among undecided voters is attributable to the endgame of groups like GOPtrust.com and NewsMax.com.These groups have to lead the way in running media to battle against the leftist legislation that will undoubtedly emanate from the Obama administration and the liberal Congress America has just elected. Then they can become the basis for a Republican resurgence, just as MoveOn.org was this year for the Democrats.