The New American Electorate

This is the post I did not want to write. In fact, I wrote another one 5 days ago for publication today because I thought Mitt Romney would now be President of the United States. Am I despondent? No. Do I still have faith in the United States and its destiny? Yes. Have I changed or altered my conservative political bent? No. Am I still fearful of the direction of this country? Yes. Will I continue to call Barack Obama out on his mistakes and performance? You bet!

The pundits will dissect and analyze the results of this election for the next few months but one thing is sure; this is a changed electorate. Voters are impressionable and impulsive, and facts or astute analysis to solve problems is not the path to victory. It’s the way you package the message and create perceptions that count. One of my friends who reads this blog told me that, but I did not heed his warning because I am a logical businessman with scientific training. Facts may win in the long term, but perception and emotion prevails in the short term when our electorate is made up primarily of women, Hispanics, and people under 30.

Of course, the danger is that impressionable or emotional people are more prone to make mistakes or take precipitous actions, and that makes this world a more dangerous place. It also means that the less educated and less informed have a greater influence on outcomes. This means our direction as a country becomes more like the rest of the pack and our exceptionalism dissolves.

With this kind of electorate, a campaign run by President Obama works well regardless of whether most people think we are headed in the wrong direction, or the economy has not really improved, or poverty is on the rise. He did it with a negative campaign that demonized his opponent, and told mistruths and lies about him enough times that the perception was created. Also, it was startlingly that 15% of the electorate said that Hurricane Sandy impacted their vote! That’s what happens with an impulsive electorate when visual impressions are so important. What you see is more important that what you say!

I will continue to support the conservative message because I believe it is the right one. However, based on the election I am disconnected with the American public, but not by much, according to the popular vote count. Unfortunately, only 10 states dictated events in the electoral vote. So nothing much has changed, and we are headed to 4 more years of big government. I only hope that Mr. Obama take heed of the tax reform ideas of Mr. Romney to get us out of this economic mess, because he appears clueless at this point. See, I still have my spunk!