Ny Safidinao

As conservatives search for an explanation for Mitt Romney's loss, much of the blame has been directed at the collapse of his campaign's Election Day get out the vote efforts, a massive organizational failure that resulted in lower Republican turnout than even John McCain got in 2008. A major source of Romney's GOTV problems appears to have been the disastrous Project ORCA, an expensive technological undertaking that was supposed to provide the campaign with real-time poll monitoring that would allow Republicans to target GOTV efforts on Election Day. In the week leading up to the election, Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul told Business Insider that ORCA was "the Republican Party’s newest, most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 election," touting it as the game-changer that would blow even the Obama campaign's sophisticated GOTV system out of the water. But on almost all counts, ORCA failed miserably. In a fascinating piece for Ace of...

Mitt Romney could have won. By Tuesday night, it was certain that 48 percent of the country no longer believed in the portrait of hope and change that Barack Obama offered up in 2008—if any ever had. Like the picture of Dorian Gray, the reality had grown somewhat repugnant to vast numbers of voters unhappy with a stagnant economy, even as Obama continued to portray himself as the good-guy savior (from George W. Bush , that is) in the White House.   But in the end, Obama secured a second historic election victory—in the face of staggering unemployment—largely because the alternative portrait that Romney presented to the country was far too incomplete. By failing to fill in critical details that would have fleshed out both his personality and his policies, the Republican challenger gave the American people a mere pencil sketch of a candidate. It wasn’t enough, and it was much too abstract. Too many voters couldn’t figure out which Romney would show up in the Oval Office. Would i...

An exit-poll data point that will surely haunt Mitt Romney and his party in weeks to come: If he had been able to draw half of voters under 30 in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, he would have won those states and the presidency.   The millennial generation — voters ages 18 to 29 — was widely expected to stay home on Election Day, deflated by partisan politics and disappointed by the president they overwhelmingly endorsed four years ago. Instead, young voters matched their participation rate from 2008, with about 50 percent of eligible voters under 30 casting ballots. More importantly, they actually increased their share of the electorate, from 18 percent in 2008 to 19 percent this year, surpassing the proportion of voters over the age of 65 (17 percent, according to CNN exit polls). And while President Obama 's support with this subset dropped from 66 percent to 60 percent, youth voters were a key part of the coalition that lifted him to a second term. “We’re treat...

As Election Day approaches, a review of polling data going back to 1936 shows the race between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is the closest in 76 years. In many cases, polling isn’t an exact science, and few polls take into account electoral votes, which ultimately decide the winner of the presidential race. But polls showing the projected popular vote are useful indicators of how the final election will turn out. In other words, polls about the popular vote don’t always pick the winner, but they usually do. And there hasn’t been a closer election in the polling world since the mid-1930s, when scientific methods were first used to project a presidential winner based on modern sampling techniques. As of Monday, President Obama has a very slim 0.4 percent lead in the popular vote based on consensus data from Real Clear Politics . Gallup suspended its national tracking polling last week after Hurricane Sandy, but its recent swing state poll shows Obama and Romney tied ...

WASHINGTON — A small nonpartisan research center operated by professed “geeks” has found itself at the center of a rancorous $5 trillion debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney . No white paper or policy manifesto put out during the presidential campaign has proved more controversial than an August study by the Washington-based Tax Policy Center , a respected nonprofit that issues studiously detailed tax analyses. That study found, in short, that Mr. Romney could not keep all of the promises he had made on individual tax reform: including cutting marginal tax rates by 20 percent, keeping protections for investment income, not widening the deficit and not increasing the tax burden on the poor or middle class. It concluded that Mr. Romney’s plan, on its face, would cut taxes for rich families and raise them for everyone else. The detailed paper proved kindling for a political firestorm. Mr. Romney criticized the center as performing a “garbage-in, garbage-out” analysis an...

Apple has unveiled a new member of the family: the iPad Mini. This device is a clear response to the market pressure the cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 have placed on the existing iPad. So how does this scaled down version of the iPad compare with its newly refreshed big brother and the Android tablets that still come in at a lower price? Comparing Specs with the Competition Screen Size: iPad Mini's screen comes in at 7.9 inches, compared to the 9.7 inch screen of the iPad and the 7 inch screens of the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7. With a narrower bezel, iPad Mini fits a bit more screen into the same real estate. Resolution: 1024x768 — this is not the Retina display that Apple touts as its high end screens on the iPhone 5 and the bigger iPad. Rather, it's the same resolution as the iPad 2, but with more pixels per inch. Also, the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD have higher resolution 1280x800 screens. Thickness: 7.2mm thick — that's roughly 1/3 of an inch...

This is the twelfth post of the "Vital Issues" Series. This series examines the most important issues of the 2012 Presidential Election and how they will impact the future of our nation. Polling in the presidential race is neck and neck , with just 19 days to go until the election. Each side has consolidated a strong base but neither has enough support to push them over into a majority yet. The election, then, will come down to an enigmatic group of undecided voters that are alternatively pandered to and mocked in political circles. So who are these people? The composite for a prototypical undecided voter is: Female Single White Employed 18-to-29 years old Didn't graduate from college Low income Union household Identifies as Protestant but doesn't go to church Skipped the debate. Here's how we know: Typically it's difficult to get the detailed internal data for the poll, but the Tarrance/LRP poll, released by Politico and George Washington...

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney made fun of themselves and each other at a high-profile charity dinner Thursday in New York. The formal event hosted by the city's Catholic Archdiocese at the luxury Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was a chance for the candidates to take a break from an often combative presidential campaign. Romney, a multi-millionaire, began the evening by taking a shot at his own wealth, telling the formally dressed crowd that he was glad he and his wife Ann could slip into clothes they "wear around the house." His speech also poked fun at the media, who many Republicans accuse of favoring Democrats. "Let's just say some in the media have a certain way of looking at things. When I suddenly, pulled ahead in some of the major polls, what was the headline? 'Polls show Obama leading from behind,' Romney joked. "And I have already seen early reports from tonight's dinner. Headline: 'Obama embrac...

President Obama ’s re-election campaign is straining to raise the huge sums it is counting on to run against Mitt Romney , with sharp dropoffs in donations from nearly every major industry forcing it to rely more than ever on small contributions and a relative handful of major donors.        From Wall Street to Hollywood, from doctors and lawyers, the traditional big sources of campaign cash are not delivering for the Obama campaign as they did four years ago. The falloff has left his fund-raising totals running behind where they were at the same point in 2008 — though well ahead of Mr. Romney’s — and has induced growing concern among aides and supporters as they confront the prospect that Republicans and their “ super PAC ” allies will hold a substantial advantage this fall. With big checks no longer flowing as quickly into his campaign, Mr. Obama is leaning harder on his grass-roots supporters, whose small contributions make up well over h...

Bloodied but still advancing, Mitt Romney methodically progressed toward the GOP nomination after a grueling Super Tuesday that underscored the continuing class, religious and ideological divisions in a closely divided Republican electorate. Despite clear signs of continued resistance in the GOP’s conservative heartland, Romney reaffirmed the verdict of his momentum-shifting victory last week in Michigan: the former Massachusetts governor is attracting a coalition just broad enough to hold off his principal remaining rival, Rick Santorum. In particular, Romney’s nail-biting win in Ohio, capping a night that widened his overall delegate lead, may allow him to begin shifting the conversation among Republicans from whether he will clinch the nomination, to when. [Related: Early Ohio results prompted mini-panic] Most impressively, Romney, across the broad Super Tuesday landscape, reconfirmed his hold on the better-educated, more affluent managerial wing of his party. Romney carried both vo...

Like" us on Facebook.com/TrendingNow and follow me on Twitter @Knowlesitall! If you have anything you want to look up on Wikipedia, you'd better do it today, or you're going to have to wait a full 24 hours to get your answer. Why? Well, Wikipedia will be leading a number of high-profile websites going dark on Wednesday to protest two controversial bills in Congress. SOPA, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representatives, and PIPA, the Protect I-P Act in the Senate, are designed to crack down on the illegal sharing of movies and music on the Web. However, critics say the anti-piracy legislation is censorship and would force sites to police the online world. On Twitter, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, confirmed that all of Wikipedia's 3.8 million English-language articles will be unavailable from midnight Eastern time tonight until midnight Wednesday. Anyone who visits the site will be redirected to a banner that reads "The Internet mus...

Rick Santorum's powerful finish in the Iowa caucus is bringing fresh attention to his tenure in Congress, including ethics questions that dogged him about a preferred mortgage he received from a bank run by campaign donors, and federal funds that went to a real estate developer who backed his charity. One of the top donors to Santorum's charity was also the beneficiary of an $8 million Santorum-sponsored federal earmark, according to published reports. Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who filed an ethics complaint against Santorum in 2006 on behalf of a watchdog group, said her organization's website received a tidal wave of visitors in the past 24 hours, and in an interview she said she believes people will discover that the GOP presidential contender is "hardly the moral paragon he purports to be." "There were several instances in which Santorum appeared to have taken campaign contributions in direct exchange for legislative assistance," said...

There's far too much talk about turnout on election days, largely because there's little else to talk about until the results come in. Most of the discussion on TV is sound and fury, signifying nothing. The total number of voters who show up to the caucuses is far less meaningful to the campaigns than the makeup of electorate--which particular voters show up to cast a vote. To help fill some of the airspace between now and then, here's a guide to interpreting tonight's results from Iowa as they're coming in: 1. Geography. First, pay attention to the big population centers. That's where the votes are. Polk County, home to Des Moines, was responsible for nearly 20 percent of the Republican vote in 2008, and Mike Huckabee won it by a substantial margin. If Romney is significantly besting the 23 percent he received in Polk County four years ago, that will bode well for his evening. He likely needs to do the same in neighboring suburban Dallas County. Sioux County h...

At 7 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Jan. 3, the first contest of the 2012 presidential nominating process finally kicks into gear in Iowa. As you've heard countless times, Iowans vote in caucuses, which are small political meetings held in 1,774 locations scattered around the state. Here's a quick primer. How It Works A primary election feels very much like any other election day. Polls are open all day, and voters show up when they want. But a caucus is actually a meeting, with a schedule: It starts at a certain time; party business is conducted; and, at some point, voting occurs. Matt Strawn, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, starts with the basics. "Well, the first thing is you need to be obviously an Iowa resident who is eligible to vote in the state of Iowa," he says. You need to show up at the proper precinct, based on your address. You can participate if you'll be 18 years old on Election Day of November 2012. If you're a registered Republican, ...