Republican candidate in the US election , Mitt Romney has conceded defeat telling supporters in Boston that he has called President Barack Obama to congratulate him on winning the election.
“I believe in America. I believe in the people of America,” Romney said. “This election is over but our principles endure.”
“Paul and I have left everything on the field. We have given our all to this campaign,” he added. “I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country, but the nation chose another leader.”
Altogether, the speech clocked in at just under five minutes. And then he left the stage:
Tag: Romney
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Romney concedes defeat
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Romney to campaign on election day
Mitt Romney will not spend the final hours of the presidential race in his hometown, as is traditional for a candidate, but instead will embark upon a last-minute push for votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The two Election Day campaign stops, which were added to the schedule Monday afternoon, cap a campaign season of upheaval, unconventional moves and late-in-the-game surges that make Tuesday’s outcome difficult to predict, the CNN reports.
Romney wakes up at home in Belmont, Massachusetts, on Tuesday morning after a few hours of sleep. He and his wife, Ann, will vote at their local polling place before the campaign charter takes off for the heavily congested area of Middle America known as the Rust Belt.
The Romney campaign said the GOP presidential nominee would make two quick, informal stops in Cleveland and Pittsburgh to thank volunteers and help with get-out-the-vote efforts.
Romney has spent time in Ohio almost every day this week, and his campaign says a rising tide of momentum has put Pennsylvania in play for the White House hopeful.
But top advisers, almost all of whom were traveling with the candidate as the race came to a close, were immediately confronted with questions about whether the decision to campaign on Election Day signaled an unease with the state of the race.
Though polls in Ohio have tightened considerably over the last month, President Barack Obama has maintained a stubborn lead there.
Romney officials pointed out that Obama’s leads are often within polls’ margins of error.
A senior Romney adviser also told reporters that campaigning on Election Day was the new normal.
Both Obama and Sen. John McCain made stops on voting day in 2008, as did George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004.
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A close race forces Obama, Romney to knock voters’ doors
What has knocking at doors got to do with the race to the White House? The closeness of the race, whose winner is expected today, has forced President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney to resort to ‘ingenious’ means: their volunteers trudge from door to door and call up millions of voters, desperately seeking one last voter, reports OLUKOREDE YISHAU in Chicago
Whoever wins today’s election between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney may owe it largely to two major methods: knocking voters’ doors and calling them up. They also used text messages. A professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison said he got five messages in less than one hour from each of the candidates soliciting his vote.
Billions have been spent on television advertisements in swing states such as Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Iowa, but the candidates have not played with knocking from door to door to beg people to either come out and vote or get registered and vote immediately. In America, a potential voter can still register, even on election day once he or she can provide means of identification and other details of eligibility.
In the freezing weather and with hunger biting at their tummies, the volunteers, who were mostly recruited at rallies, other campaign events and near early voting locations, knocked on doors of neigbours pleading their candidates’ case.
From Milwaukee to Washington, Chicago, Janesville and Madison, The Nation observed volunteers for both Obama and Romney either knocking doors of neigbours or calling them up at phone banks set up by each candidates in parts of the country.
Many of the volunteers have been knocking doors or calling up voters for months. Some have been doing it for years, it was learnt. They have had to pay the price of getting late to bed and rising early. Some take coffee to get going again in the morning. The phone banks always have coffee and staff serving it.
In Milwaukee, a group known as Black Ambassadors knocked from door to door convincing voters to get out and vote. A volunteer said she had to combine the task with her regular job as a teacher. “I just love doing this for our country. The important thing is to get them out to vote, though I ask them to vote for President Obama,” she said.
At a phone bank located inside the Auto Workers’ Union building in Janesville, the home town of Republican presidential running mate, Ryan Paul, Democrat volunteers, called up voters begging them desperately to go out and vote. Some of the volunteers came from Chicago, which is just about two hours by road. They said their last-minute efforts were crucial to winning the White House for Obama. Not so far away from there, Republican volunteers holed up in a building used by Ryan as constituency office, called one voter after the other. On the wall of the phone bank was a notice indicating rewards (souvenirs) for volunteers who could call certain number of voters.
At a phone bank run by the Obama for America in Chicago, volunteers, tired from calling up voters, said their job was crucial to deciding the election. One of them told The Nation that even on election day, they would be at the bank to call up voters. He said: We are going to continue because it is important to get out as many people as possible. It can make the difference. We are not breaking any law.”
Across the battleground states, Obama’s aides said 5,117 staging areas were set up in homes, garages and community halls for volunteers to work from. Romney did not have that much operation, but campaign officials were optimistic it would yield dividends.
A recent Washington Post poll in Virginia showed that 43 per cent of likely voters already had been contacted by Obama’s campaign and 40 per cent had heard from Romney’s. Republicans claim to have made five million voter contacts.
The Nation learnt that the contacts of voters are sourced from the voter register, which contains phone numbers and other details. Armed with these details, the volunteers assist their candidates, who polls released on Sunday showed, were neck-to-neck.
But, many voters, bombarded by calls, have stopped picking up their phones. A volunteer for Romney in Madison confirmed experiencing this. Obama aides said this was responsible for their emphasis on door-to-door canvassing. Obama himself called up voters from Air Force One.
The door-to-door and call up efforts are complimented by the candidates, who spent Sunday and yesterday in the battleground states, making their final pitches to voters. On Sunday, Romney was in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Obama was in New Hampshire and Colorado. The two biggest swing states of Florida and Ohio also hosted the two men.
Obama yesterday returned to Wisconsin; this time to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin State and home of the famous Wisconsin University. He attended a rally at the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in front of the County Building. He was assisted by a rock star Bruce Springsteen in this eve of election rally.
As Obama held the Madison rally, Vice President Joe Biden held three campaign events in Virginia. Former President Bill Clinton made stops in Pennsylvania. First Lady Michelle Obama flew down the East Coast, sealing the deal for her husband in Charlotte, North Carolina and Orlando, Florida.
After Madison, Obama, assisted by rap star Jay Z, addressed a rally in Columbus, Ohio. He and the First Lady returned to Iowa for a final grassroots rally in Des Moines.
In the long run, the history of the last days of the race for the White House may not dwell much on reliance on modern technology and the newest techniques in micro-targeting. Both sides’ response to the polarised politics, which saw them using the ground-level effort of knocking on doors, will sure take a prime slot.
And if the queues at early voting centres are anything to by, the efforts are yielding results. But in whose favour will it finally be? It will all be clear by tomorrow morning in Nigeria and later today in America.
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Romney as ‘evil genius’
Who says campaign of calumny is a Nigerian thing? Or what do you call a campaign advert in which President Barack Obama’s strategists painted his rival Mitt Romney as the ‘evil genius’.
The ad was inspired by the moment when the Republican candidate turned to moderator Jim Lehrer and said he would defund the Public Broadcasting Service.
‘I’m sorry Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS,’ he said. ‘I like PBS – I love Big Bird, I actually like you too, but I’m going to stop borrowing money from China to pay for things we don’t need.”
Democrats exploited the incident for a sarcastic campaign advert.
The 30-second video mocks Romney for taking aim at the public broadcaster rather than cracking down on financial fraud.
Sesame Street, however, criticised the Obama campaign for exploiting their character and demanded that the advert be cancelled and removed from the internet.
Obama winning the ad battle
A study released last Wednesday showed that President Obama and his allies have aired more adverts in battleground states this month despite being outspent by Republican nominee Mitt Romney and GOP groups. The study also shows that Romney is getting less for his money .The Obama campaign and its supporters spent $77 million on 112,730 advertisements from October 1 to 21, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyses political ad spending. Romney and his allies, by contrast, spent more, $87 million, on 15,000 fewer spots.
Blackmailing the voters?
The International Tribune Herald, which is the global edition of New York Times, carried a report last week which said strategists for both President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney have gathered private information about voters and are exploiting them to get them to vote on election day. According to the report, such information include whether or not they are gay or lesbian, their crime history and others that they may ordinarily want to keep from the public.
But, on record, both candidates insist they respect people’s privacy. If it is true that they are exploiting such strategy, it may as well mean blackmailing them to vote.
Of third party candidates and independents
It is as if only President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are running for America’s presidency. But, it is not. There are third party candidates and independents. Third party candidates are of parties other than Democratic and Republican. Independents are standing on their own.
The third parties include Socialist Party and the Peace and Freedom Party.
Why Americans vote first Tuesday in November
Hear what an expert says: “In a rural republic that was very religious, nobody worked or travelled on Sunday. So, this gave people who had to walk or ride their horses or wagon or whatever, gave them a full day to get to the polling place, the voting station in their county. It also was in November, which was the right time window for the expiration of the presidential term. You had to hold your election sometime – certain amount of time before the expiration of the term. It was also good to hold it in November because the harvest had been collected and the farmers had some spare time on their hands. And also in the northern states in November, the roads are clear and dry, you haven’t had major snowfall, there’s no mud, it’s easier to travel. So these are some of the arcane reasons that led us to establish our election day on Tuesday after the first Monday in November.”
A controversial election result?
Under the United States Electoral College system, President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney need to win at least 270 of the country’s 538 electoral votes to be president, rather than simply the majority of votes from voters. With pollsters predicting a close race, the Electoral College result could possibly yield a controversial election outcome.
Florida, whose 29 electoral votes are the biggest prize among states considered too close to call, Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes, and others are being bombarded by Obama and Romney in the last days of campaigns.
‘Voter intimidation in Florida, others’
There are attempts to confuse voters in Florida, Virginia and Indiana. Voters have received phone calls telling them there was no need to cast a ballot in person on election day because they could vote by phone.
Reuters quoted Kurtis Killian, a Republican from St. Augustine, Florida, as one of those who have reported receiving calls that encouraged them to vote by phone so they would not have to go to the polls.
Killian said he received a call from a man who identified himself as an employee of the Florida Division of Elections.
He also said he refused the caller’s offer to cast his vote by phone then reported the call to local elections officials.
“I know there is no such thing as phone voting,” Killian said. But “for someone who can’t get out easily,” such as elderly or disabled voters, “they might go for that because it would be convenient for them. Once you think you voted you won’t go to the polls. My vote would be cancelled out.”
Virginia’s State Board of Elections received similar complaints from at least 10 people – most of them elderly – who said they had been urged to vote by phone.
Reuters reported that in Ohio and Wisconsin, billboards in mostly low-income and minority neighbourhoods showed prisoners behind bars and warned of criminal penalties for voter fraud, an effort that voting rights groups say was designed to intimidate minority voters.
Some employers, such as David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who helped fund the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, are pushing their workers to vote for Republican Mitt Romney for president.
Efforts to mislead, intimidate or pressure voters are an increasingly prominent part of the political landscape.
“We’ve seen an up-tick in deceptive and intimidating tactics designed to prevent eligible Americans from voting,” said Eric Marshall of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who manages a coalition that has a telephone hot line that collects tips on alleged voter intimidation.
They also cite groups linked to the conservative Tea Party movements that are training tens of thousands of people to monitor polling places on November 6 for voter fraud, a plan criticised as an attempt to discourage voting.