Friday 9 November 2012

Week 7 Blog Post

The outcome for the 2012 Election shows an interesting shift in the makeup of america's voters and what values they hold to be important in the modern age.

Traditionally, the Democrats target the poor, the minorities and the higher educated while the Republicans appeal to white males of a lower education in rural areas. These generally mean that the East and West are Democrat and the South and Mid-West are Republican. http://electoral-vote.com/

However, in the 2012 election, some breakaway states in the South shifted position to vote for Obama instead of Romney. This is, probably, because of the increase in the Latino population in the areas close to the border. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/11/news/la-pn-poll-southern-romney-mormon-rich-20120911

What is noticeable about this election is the lack of real policies - Obama only released his manifesto two weeks before the election. This is probably due to the main issues being unsolvable. The financial crisis requires bipartisan agreement, regardless of who wins, due to the Bush spending cuts coming to an end in January without Congressional intervention - called the Fiscal Cliff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_fiscal_cliff
Because of this, the two parties will probably have to work close together, especially as Republicans control the senate. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/will-obama-invite-romney-to-join-cabinet-and-other-lingering-election-questions/

Romney should appeal to certain religious sections of the population but according to other Mormons, he is not a good practitioner. The current feelings against the super rich also played against him whereas in previous years (Bush for example) it hasn't been a problem. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/reid-calls-romney-a-bad-mormon.html


The Sandy Storm probably contributed also, with hammering home to many Americans that climate change is at their front door and needs to be investigated. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/obama-sandy-climate-change_n_2086942.html

Other factors include Obama's bail out loans to the car industry, which helped many in Ohio keep their job and his proven record in foreign policy (with capturing Bin Laden). Also the republicans constantly making upsetting the female vote took away their support. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/auto-industry-bailout-key-to-obamas-win-in-ohio-8293322.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100187790/bin-laden-is-dead-and-general-motors-is-alive-thats-why-barack-obama-is-heading-back-to-the-white-house/

Ultimately, it appears that as America ages and becomes more multinational, its industry based on young, progressive companies instead of "old money" and traditional values of security with wealth are shown to be flawed, the country is voting to become more liberal and it is clear that the republican party will need to change. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9666345/US-election-2012-how-US-voters-have-changed.html

This is an interesting site which shows that it wasn't all about race, sex and wealth - http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/demography-not-the-only-reason-romney-lost/



No comments:

Post a Comment