American History
Introduction
According to the median voter theorems there are two main principles which can help us count and measure the amount of voters that vote for one candidate as well as to predict the outcome of the election on the ground of various primary polls.
So the first key principle is that if parties or candidates want to win, they should orient on the median voters. The second key aspect suggests that people will choose will vote for such an alternative, which is the most closest and similar to their prospective.
The picture describes in what directions should two parties, organisations or candidates move according to the median voter theorem (Congleton).
Now imagining that my name is David Axelrod and the whole story takes place on September, 30 2012. Being the chief campaign strategist of Barack Obama I would send Michelle and other members of Obama`s team or family to get more voters or support the trust of those who are already our voters.
For start, let us dwell upon the matter of Ohio as it has one of the biggest ratings of prevalence of moderate, having quite a striking advantage over Romney. This means that this state should be visited just once and by not so famous people, so we can get some new voters and not lose the old ones as they are pretty sure in their choice since there are so many of them. Such amount creates a median voter stream making them medians and encouraging other people to vote for Obama.
An opposite to the North Carolina`s situation we may observe while considering the amount of visits to North Carolina. Having a look at the numbers it is obvious that North Carolina has already determined its medians as Obama practically has no advantage over Romney. In addition, North Carolina is the only state won by Romney and this fact makes us wonder whether the estimated Obama`s advantage can really influence and show us the true outcome and prediction of the votes.
Comparing North Carolina with Florida, we may observe quite a fascinating paradox as North Carolina possess much bigger estimate Obama`s advantage, but Obama`s actual margin of victory is practically nullified.
So far our person top of the states to visit is the following:
Florida
North Carolina
Wisconsin
Colorado
Virginia
Ohio
New Hempshire
Iowa
Nevada
Now imagining that we resigned from our last job and our new occupation is being a senior political analyst at NBC News and MSNBC we may suggest that both candidates did a pretty good job. But in an overall outcome there were some mistakes they did upon the five days period of time between November 1 and November 5 in 2012.
Obama and his team paid twenty four visits with this period of time while his opponent paid 32 visits.
One of the main problems of these candidates is that they paid too much attention to the states in which they had no advantages. For example, Romney`s 10 visits to Ohio which has estimate advantage of Obama measured of 3.6 looks quite ridiculous ("The Electoral Map - Presidential Race Ratings And Swing States - Election 2012 - Nytimes.Com").
Another big problem is that no one paid much attention to the state of North Carolina. No campaign visits in such area resulted in Romney overcoming his opponent in this region even though the Romney team did not pay any visit as well.
Actually, we may also suggest that some of the visits were paid off. For example, Colorado showed a very good result having 5 visits or Iowa where we see the advantage of over 5 points for just 2 visits opposed by 4 visits of Romney. New Hampshire and Nevada had a pretty high advantage comparing to the Romney, despite of the bigger number of visits by Romney.
So far we may name several main problems concerning strategies of both Obama`s and Romney`s campaigns:
Not putting trust in some states, such as North Carolina
Not having the members of their teams sent there for supporting the campaign and catching some new voters
Putting too much trust into some of the states
Focusing and spending time on one state which was friendlier to the opponent.
Works Cited
Congleton, Rogers. "The Median Voter Model". Encyclopedia Of Public Choice. 1st ed. 2004. 382-387. Print.
"The Electoral Map - Presidential Race Ratings And Swing States - Election 2012 - Nytimes.Com". The New York Times. N.p., 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2016.
