While some Republicans are comforting themselves that Mitt Romney’s defeat simply stemmed from inadequate turnout, it actually resulted from his failure to attract more votes from minorities, says Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel.
“What ought to scare the GOP is this: even with higher GOP turnout in key states, even with Mr. Obama shedding voters, Democrats still won,” she writes. “Mr. Obama accomplished this by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney's better turnout.”
Republicans must fight to gain the support of these minority voters, Strassel says. “That, for the record, was the GOP's real 2012 turnout disaster. Elections are about the candidate and the message, yes, but also about the ground game.”
The Romney campaign didn’t have a strong grassroots strategy toward Hispanics, she says. Indeed, the Republican ground game for Hispanics constitutes a “mind-boggling failure,” Strassel writes.
“The GOP doesn't campaign in those communities, doesn't register voters there, doesn't knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from — by e-mail, at their door, on the phone — was the president's.”
It wouldn’t take much of a shift in minority-voter preferences to turn elections the GOP’s way, Strassel says. “The GOP might see that as the enormous opportunity it is, rather than a problem.”
Obama beat Romney among Hispanics 71 percent to 27 percent, among blacks 93 percent to 6 percent, and among Asians 73 percent to 26 percent.
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