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Mail
Magazine 24
Obama
Is in
Serious Trouble in Pennsylvania
by Mike
Flynn
One of my
first jobs in politics--decades ago--was to analyze the “undervote” in
uncontested primaries. An undervote happens when a voter fails to
register a
vote in a particular primary contest when there is only one candidate
on the
ballot. In essence, the voter simply skips over the race. It happens
either
because the voter hasn’t heard of that candidate or they have some
basic
opposition to that candidate. Our general rule of thumb was that a
candidate
who had more than 10% undervote was in serious trouble. In many
counties in the
recent Pennsylvania primary, Obama’s undervote was 30% or higher.
The
Pennsylvania primary was in April, but detailed primary information is
only now
available. This is significant, though, because the primary was before
the recent
dismal jobs report, Obama’s campaign missteps or the aggressive tactics
of the
Romney campaign. Keep in mind, also, that these numbers are based
solely on
Democrat primary voters. There are no Republican or Independent voters
in this.
This is Obama’s base. That said, look at the map above, in only about
three
counties is he winning the support of more than 90% of Democrat voters
in an
uncontested primary. In over 27 counties, he is winning less than 70%.
In a few
counties, he is winning 55%.
Our old
rule of thumb was that any undervote more than 20% was a reason to go
to DefCon
1. It signaled a serious problem with the base and would necessitate
our
adapting campaign strategy and tactics to shore up our support. I have
never
seen a situation where a candidate had an undervote of 30-40% and went
on to
win the general election. In fact, in such situations, we would often
pull out
of the race entirely.
I realize
recent polls in Pennsylvania show the race to be tight, with a decided
edge to
Obama. But, I also realize that if he is losing 30-40% of the vote in a
Democrat primary he is in serious trouble. That this result happened
before the
recent downturn in the economy is even more telling. Obama is in
trouble in PA.
And, if he is in trouble there, he is well on his way to being a
one-term
President.
Source:
Breitbart
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