Here's a fun article.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/?pageNum=1&tag=page

Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade.

Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president.

But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

They just couldn't believe they had been so wrong. And maybe they weren't: There was Karl Rove on Fox saying Ohio wasn't settled, so campaign aides decided to wait. They didn't want to have to withdraw their concession, like Al Gore did in 2000, and they thought maybe the suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati, which hadn't been reported, could make a difference.

Big GOP donors see small return on investment
2012 Election results

But then came Colorado for the president and Florida also was looking tougher than anyone had imagined.

"We just felt, 'where's our path?'" said a senior adviser. "There wasn't one."

Romney then said what they knew: it was over.

His personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart on Mr. Obama's staff, Marvin Nicholson. "Is your boss available?" Jackson asked.

Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."
Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.

Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks - not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan - bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time - poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats - and that would translate into votes for Romney.
As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

They made three key miscalculations, in part because this race bucked historical trends:

1. They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president's base turned out and Romney's did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008. And fewer Republicans did: Romney got just over 2 million fewer votes than John McCain.

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren't oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans - there just weren't as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

3. Undecided voters. The perception is they always break for the challenger, since people know the incumbent and would have decided already if they were backing him. Romney was counting on that trend to continue. Instead, exit polls show Mr. Obama won among people who made up their minds on Election Day and in the few days before the election. So maybe Romney, after running for six years, was in the same position as the incumbent.

The campaign before the election had expressed confidence in its calculations, and insisted the Obama campaign, with its own confidence and a completely different analysis, was wrong. In the end, it the other way around.

"They were right," a Romney campaign senior adviser said of the Obama campaign's assessments. "And if they were right, we lose."
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I guess that explains some things. I also learned some stuff.

If so that's one place the polls were wrong.  They all tended to say Republican self identification was up.

Interesting article. I'm actually kind of surprised that Romney's campaign team beileved undecided voters break for the challenger. Its been shown to be false (especially as a blanket statement) in multiple studies when looking at recent elections. The 2004 and 2012 presidential elections are now the most notable examples, but its also been shown to be false at lower levels (Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections). I'm also interested to see the numbers on independents. It looks like a reasonable assumption, and I have some anecdotal evidence to back it up, but it still seems like an oversimplification, given that those independents would still lean and vote republican, on average. As for the overpolling of democrats, I never really bought into it.

Exit Polls (rep 2008-32%; rep 2012-32%) (ind 2008-34%; ind 2009-34%) (dem 2008-39%; dem 2012-38%)-this is national level

Yeah, I'm actually not seeing much to support the article's claim. If you look at the state exit polls, the numbers seem to be pretty consistent between 2008 and 2012 as well. I'm just not seeing this movement from the republican party to the independent category. There actually seems to be a pretty big swing for how the independents voted as well (+8 Obama in 2008; -5 Obama in 2012). My guess, there are more indendents that lean republican this time around, but they didn't come from the republican party....this would match up with Obama's smaller popular vote victory as well.

Edit: Main point: Obama won because there are more democratic identifiers...not because of a movement from the republican to the independent category.

Even that though is remotely shocking though.   The pollsters models are either or for some reason self identified Republicans didn't go to the polls.

Example

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/partisan_trends/summary_of_party_affiliation

Which is strange... all I can imagine is that it has to do with the demographic changes in the electoral college.  It used to be that Democrats were always disadvantaged by it because they got less credit for their densley packed liberal states... however things have swung in their favor as can be seen by the population/electoral swing.

For said polls to be true, and pretty much every self identification poll had this, you'd have to assume this occured in "safe" states.  Either Republican or Democrat.

That part isn't true. Romney is only about 1 million votes under McCain now, and they're not done counting. He should end up with about 3-4 million more votes than McCain. Similarly, Obama is probably going to be only down about 1-2 million votes from 2008, not the 10 million everyone has been saying. Seems like everyone is just comparing election night tallies of 2012 to the final tally from 2008, when it tooks weeks to arrive at that final count.

I think Pew actually pulled that article, because I cannot find it. I was able to find their chart via google images that someone apparently had uploaded to facebook lol.

i guess they had to believe in the romney camp but did anyone really think they would take it

how ever bad it is,most places are on the up curve which helps in politics a lot

for example over here even though labour are believing if the economy appears to be going in the right direction,it wil be hard for them to break in to govt this time round whatever else is going on

so can obama do things different now he doesn't have to be re-elected or is he handtied because of the senate or house of representative,can't remember how it all works

Where di you hear we were one of the top states?  We generally perform middle of the pack when it comes to education and the only reason we do that well is because we have a bit of a cultural advantage.  Utah generally is among the bottom three states on spending per student, but the mormon church is headquarted here and they put a huge emphasis on educatio which is probably the main reason we perform as well as we do.

here are some things the state has tried to do over the last couple of years here in utah.

1. Cut sex education for students comepletely from schools, Instead of teaching the students sex ed, they wanted to have night classes to teach parents sex ed. (If they didnt know sex ed how did they become parents?). Thankfully that one got vetoed by the governor.

2. They wanted to comepletely cut out the 12th grade to save money.  The reason? Because some students dont take their 12th grade year seriously.

3. The schools had been fighting for money for new textbooks for years, but the legislature waited until the schools had to cut funding to some programsto buy textbboks before they ok'd the money.  However, it was stipulated to only be used on textbooks, and since the schools had just bought textbooks, it all got sent back.  A dirty political move that let appear to pay for new textbooks, but in reality they didnt.  

Our state government does crap like that all the time.  Just stupid stuff.  Federal involvement is very minimal.  They just have some minor guidelines for curriculum and special education so kids can kind of learn the same things all over the country.  If the federal government didnt have them, the states would have them anyway, so i dont see any reason to send the money back to the states.  If anything, the federal government is more hands off with it than the state government would be.

Apparently much of what I learned wasn't actually true!