Final 2012 Election Analysis

I did a regression analysis of the 2012 election results by county versus demographics and economic conditions and the results were for the most part exactly what one would have expected. Since 2012 was an unusual election because the total vote count decreased from 2008, I specifically analyzed the change in voter turnout between 2008 and 2012 versus demographics and economic conditions.

Gender – No surprise here, men broke for Republicans and women broke for Democrats. However, the results were inconclusive for statistical significance when gender was broken down into economic variables such as poverty and employment rate.

Age – Surprisingly, most of the data was inconclusive for any statistical significance between varying age groups. Hard to believe but some young female age groups favored Republicans with strong statistical significance while some older male age groups favored Democrats with strong correlation. The converse was also true. In other words, the data was all over the place. Age groups were broken down into 5 year or smaller increments between 18 to over 85.

Food Stamps – People on food stamps voted Democratic.

Ethnicity – Whites voted Republican while Hispanics and African Americans voted Democratic.

Income – People with higher household incomes voted Republican.

Family – Married couples voted Republican and single families broke for the Democrats.

Education – Democrats did well with those having less than a high school diploma and those with a bachelor’s or better degree. Republicans did better with everything in between.

Economy – For the most part there was no specific statistical significance with the economy and the change in voter turnout. Other than food stamps, there was no significant data indicating an advantage to Republicans and Democrats for either employment or poverty status.

Independents – Their voting trends tracked closer to Republicans than Democrats. However, this data was only analyzed on about half the counties nationwide within states that release data on the ideological breakdown of the voting populous.

From this data, the key to Obama winning the 2012 election was not only the White vote staying at home, but the increase in the food stamp payrolls. The food stamp payrolls include many people above poverty and that worked in his favor to win votes and to get his electorate to the polls. The Republicans were able to cut Obama’s margin of victory from 2008 in half mostly due to more Independents breaking with the Republicans. Republicans lost because they were unable to make Obama pay for the stagnant economy as there is no evidence that employment status played a part in the election outcome.