So I’ll be fast.
1. Maybe there aren’t as many missing voters as Sean Trende thinks. Figuring where Romney underperformed with whites (not his biggest problem), will have to wait until more of the votes are counted. According to the exit polls Romney won white voters by 59% to 39% for Obama. By way of comparison, McCain won whites by 55% to 43% . By way of further comparison, the last winning Republican presidential candidate won whites by 58% to 41%. The white voters who actually showed up were the most Republican-leaning of any group of white voters since 1988. Romney did worse than McCain among Latinos and Asians despite running in a much more favorable political environment.
2. Contra John Yoo, Romney will likely surpass McCain total popular vote when all the ballots are counted and do so by more than a million votes. Romney did not get fewer total votes. He got more votes. They just haven’t all been counted yet.
3. I’m not primarily worried about the superior technical expertise of the Democrats going forward. At least there is a model for Republicans to copy. How Republicans win over growing constituencies while keeping their limited government commitments is going to be harder. There are models there too (look at Reagan in the 1960s), but the applications are more general than specific.
