About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

128 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry128 and id is 1 raw text is: How the Economy and Partisanship Shaped the 2012 Presidential and Congressional Elections GARY C. JACOBSON BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Mitt Romney and his closest campaign advisers were surprised and shocked by Romney's loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 election.1 The flawed internal polling in battleground states2 that projected a decisive Romney victory seemed credible to the Romney camp-despite contrary reports from numerous public surveys-because it confirmed what they had believed all along: the economy would ultimately make Obama a one-term president, just as it had Jimmy Carter in 1980 and G.H.W. Bush in 1992. This was a reasonable belief. The U.S. economy had been growing since the Great Recession ended in the summer of 2009, but too slowly to produce robust growth in jobs or family incomes. Unemployment stayed above 8 percent until September of the election year; poverty rates were 1Jan Crawford, Advisor: Romney Shellshocked by Loss, CBS News, 8 November 2012, accessed at http:// www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss, 9 November 2012; Romney had prepared a victory speech but not a concession speech, and his campaign had scheduled a fireworks show in Boston harbor to celebrate their victory; see Glen Johnson, Romney Had Fireworks Display Set for Election Night, The Boston Globe, accessed at http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/ 2012/11/08/mitt-romney-planned-boston-harbor-fireworks-show-that-was-scotched-election-loss/ Gylk1HhYLn63NSzNdQo6LJ/story.html, 12 November 2012. 2Noam Scheiber, Exclusive: The Internal Polls That Made Romney Think He'd Win, The New Republic, accessed at http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/110597/exclusive-the-polls-made-mitt-romney-think-hed- win#, 4 December 2012. GARY C. JACOBSON is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and has published extensively on U.S. elections and public opinion. His most recent book is A Divider Not a Uniter: George W Bush and the American People, 2nd Edition. POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY I Volume 128 Number 1 2013 www.psgonline.org © 2013 Academy of Political Science 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most