Category Archives: US Election
New poll shows majority of Americans would support Hillary Clinton presidency bid
A new poll over speculation that Hillary Clinton may run for president in 2016 shows the majority of Americans would support her bid.
According to the ABC News/Washington Post survey, 57 percent of people would support Clinton as a presidential candidate, versus 37 percent opposed.
The research shows the current Secretary of State has 66 percent among women and the backing of 82 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents. Clinton, a Democratic candidate in 2009, also snagged support from 23 percent of Republican respondents.
In her current role, a full 68 percent of those surveyed approved of her position, while 68 percent approved overall.
Read More: Mike Bloomberg’s love triangle with Hillary Clinton and Christine Quinn
The research shows Clinton does less well among nonwhites than did Obama, who won re-election with 80 percent of their support last month.
Read More US political stories here
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellphone Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,020 adults.
Clinton, who is currently visiting Ireland, is expected to step down from her State Department at the end of the year.
The former first lady arrived in Ireland on Wednesday as part of a four-day visit to Europe.
On Thursday she will deliver a speech on human rights at the Helix in Dublin City University (DCU). She will travel to Belfast on Friday to discuss the peace process and investment opportunities.
Hillary Clinton for President in 2016? As she steps down as Secretary of State all she wants to do is sleep
Will Hillary run in 2016? It’s the question that her most ardent supporters have been asking themselves since 2008.
According to The New York Times, Politico reported that Public Policy Polling had determined that if the Iowa caucuses were held last week Clinton would get 58 percent of the vote. Joe Biden raked in 17 percent.
It’s not as if she hasn’t read the tea leaves herself. In fact, she says, every day strangers come up and tell her she has an obligation to run and become the nation’s first woman president.
‘Oh, I’ve ruled it out, but you know me,’ she tells the Times. ‘Everybody keeps asking me. So I keep ruling it out and being asked.’
What she has not done, supporters and critics note, is rule it out
Right now she’d rather list all the things she won’t do when she’s no longer secretary of state.
‘I am so looking forward to next year,’ she told the Times. ‘I just want to sleep and exercise and travel for fun. And relax. It sounds so ordinary, but I haven’t done it for 20 years. I would like to see whether I can get untired. I work out and stuff, but I don’t do it enough and I don’t do it hard enough because I can’t expend that much energy on it.’
At 65, you can’t deny her the impulse to relax a bit. But it’s highly unlikely she will for long.
But there is the matter of her history to consider too. If Hillary Clinton ran for president again, the Times observes, she would probably be the best-prepared candidate in American history. She has lived in the White House, she has served in the United States Senate, she knows virtually every head of state in the world. She’s more than ready.
Voting By Sex, Age, Race, Money, And Education
Amazing Facts About US Presidential Voting By Sex, Age, Race, Money, And Education
The New York Times has an awesome graphical breakdown of voting data from the 2012 Presidential election.
In case you had any doubt about how the country breaks down along gender, age, race, financial status, religion, education, and community lines, just have a glance at these stats.
Obama won “Women” by 11 points (55% to 44%). This was very important, because women made up 53% of voters.
Romney won “Men” by 7 points (52% to 45%). Men were only 47% of voters.
Obama won “Young voters” (18-29) by an astounding 24 points (60% to 36%). These folks were 19% of total voters.
Obama won “Young middle aged voters” (30-44) by an impressive 7 points (52% to 45%). These folks were 26% of total voters.
Romney won “Middle-aged voters” (45-59) by 5 points (52% to 47%). These were 29% of voters.
Romney won “Older voters” (60+) by 9 points (54% to 45%). These were 25% of voters.
Obama won “Black voters” by a staggering 87 points (93% to 6%). Blacks were 13% of voters.
Obama won “Asian voters” by a remarkable 47 points (73% to 26%). Asians were 3% of voters.
Obama won “Hispanic voters” by a remarkable 44 points (71% to 27%). Hispanics were 10% of voters.
Romney won “White voters” by 20 points (59% to 39%). Whites were 72% of voters.
Obama won gay, unmarried, and working-mother, and parents-with-young-kids voters by massive margins.
Romney won “married” voters.
Obama won uneducated (no high school), modestly educated (high school), and super-educated (graduate degree) voters.
Romney won college grads by a small margin.
Obama won by a staggering margin voters who said their financial situation is the same or better than 4 years ago.
Romney won by a big margin voters who said their financial situation is worse.
Obama won households making less than $49,999 by ~20 points
Romney won households making more than $50,000 by 6-10 points
Obama easily won voters who classify themselves as Democrats and Liberals and narrowly won those classifying themselves as Moderates
Romney easily won voters who classify themselves as Republicans and Conservatives, and very narrowly won Independents
Obama won by a landslide in big cities and easily in small cities.
Romney won easily in rural areas and more narrowly in the suburbs and towns.
Obama won Jewish voters handily (2% of voters) and Catholic voters (25% of voters) narrowly
Romney won protestants (53% of voters) and white evangelical Christians (26% of voters).
via Voting By Sex, Age, Race, Money, And Education – Business Insider.
via Voting By Sex, Age, Race, Money, And Education – Business Insider.
Where it went wrong for Romney –
Analysis: Following an ugly and seemingly interminable presidential campaign, Mitt Romney‘s hopes of becoming the 45th president of the United States unravelled in just a few hours.
The political prize that eluded him in 2008, and his father four decades before, had seemed tantalisingly close. It was all the more remarkable give that his roller-coaster campaign threatened to come off the rails early on, before roaring back to life following his first energetic television debate.
But within hours of arriving in Boston to watch the results pour in with his family and advisors, the television networks had called the election for his rival.
What may rankle most with Romney is that the obstacles which prevented him from beating an incumbent saddled with high unemployment and a disappointing first election term were largely of his own making.
There were devastating wall-to-wall attacks from Democrats, to be sure, which sought to portray him as an elitist plutocrat who was all-too comfortable with bankrupting the US car industry.
But there was no one else to blame for the verbal gaffes, his comments about the 47 per cent of people on welfare, his failure to produce tax returns or his constant shape-shifting on fundamental policy issues.
Ultimately, voters never warmed or trusted him in sufficient numbers – and Romney never effectively made the case for himself.
47 per cent
The voice on the secretly recorded video was steady, and the message was severe. “There are 47 per cent of the people who will vote for the President no matter what,” he said at a private fundraiser.
“All right, there are 47 per cent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it,” Romney said. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
It took Romney days to express regret at his comments.
Coming after a slew of ads that accused his investment company, Bain Capital, of vulture capitalism and outsourcing jobs, the damage was devastating, particularly among the blue-collar vote he so badly needed to secure.
Tax returns
Romney’s refusal to release more than two years of his tax returns gave Democrats even more ammunition. What he did release showed that he had paid a meagre 14 per cent, significantly less than average workers.
“What else is he hiding?” a narrator in an Obama ad asked viewers over the summer.
It was Romney’s decision not to release any earlier tax returns, on the basis that it would play into the hands of the Democrats’ campaign.
But it all hinted at a bigger problem.
Romney, the affluent son of a former car industry chief and state governor, was deeply uncomfortable discussing his wealth.
He did a good job of completing the caricature of a one per center by boasted that his wife had “a couple of Cadillacs” and making a $10,000 bet with his Republican primary rival, governor Rick Perry, over health care policy.
Bain Capital
Democrats spent millions of dollars during the summer portraying him as a vulture capitalist, happy to ship jobs overseas in order to maxmise his financial returns.
Yet, these were the same ads – and in some cases, the same individuals – that had been used eight years earlier in his unsuccessful Senate campaign bid against Ted Kennedy.
Neither Romney, nor his campaign, insisted they were vastly exaggerated, but they never did enough to rebut them. The mud stuck. It hardly matters when he went on to tell voters at a rally in New Hampshire that he “liked to fire people”.
Shifting positions
It was no surprise that Romney would seek to make a play for the middle ground after securing a nomination.
But the sheer number of about-turns gave the impression of a candidate with no real conviction.
He largely disowned the health insurance policy introduced in Massachusetts as governor (which became the model for Obamacare) and embraced the coal industry he had denounced a few years earlier.
In order to appeal to the his Republican base, he renounced more liberal position he held in the past on abortion. It all allowed the Obama campaign to characterise these many changes as “Romnesia.” But voters – both Democrats and Republicans – didn’t forget these about-turns.
Lack of personality
Ironically, it was only during the final weeks of the campaign that some of Romney’s personality began to come through.
For most of the campaign, he had avoided revealing anything to do with Mormon faith besides clipped overall generalisations. Yet, there was aspects of it which reflected well on him. His personal engagement with charities were considerable. He have millions to voluntary groups and spent significant period of time with ordinary church members, often allowing poorer visitors from abroad visiting Boston for medical attention to stay in his home.
All in all, Romney never gave the public a good enough reason to vote for him as a person. He never effectively made the case for Romney himself, instead allowing others to define him.
via Where it went wrong for Romney – The Irish Times – Wed, Nov 07, 2012.
via Where it went wrong for Romney – The Irish Times – Wed, Nov 07, 2012.