[not american] my impression is that it is the latter - that it is hard to appeal consistently to both the party (to become the chosen candidate) and to the nation. hence the accusations of flip-flopping and the arguments from "reasonable republicans" that romney would actually have been quite good even though he had to say various odd things.
i wonder if they will attempt to change how candidates are selected.
[above i have tried to be impartial; a more personal take is that the republican party has become accustomed to lying to its supporters and is now trapped with the results. to have to rely on people trusting that their candidate is "bluffing" does not seem healthy.]
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more on topic: the results reporting really disappointed me. the take-away from silver's work is not that this is very complex. it's that the electoral college system plus most people voting the same way over time means that only a few results are uncertain. so focussing on those places allows you to predict the election. similarly, reporting all the other (known) data is irrelevant. it's not news, and it's not exciting.
yet on election night we saw every result being treated equally. there was no acknowledgement of the reality. it looked exactly like an entertainment show.
was there any presentation of the results, anywhere, that ignored most of the data and focussed only on the swing states? that spent the rest of the time analyzing what had happened in the light of the clearly expected, accurately predicted result?
i wonder if they will attempt to change how candidates are selected.
[above i have tried to be impartial; a more personal take is that the republican party has become accustomed to lying to its supporters and is now trapped with the results. to have to rely on people trusting that their candidate is "bluffing" does not seem healthy.]
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more on topic: the results reporting really disappointed me. the take-away from silver's work is not that this is very complex. it's that the electoral college system plus most people voting the same way over time means that only a few results are uncertain. so focussing on those places allows you to predict the election. similarly, reporting all the other (known) data is irrelevant. it's not news, and it's not exciting.
yet on election night we saw every result being treated equally. there was no acknowledgement of the reality. it looked exactly like an entertainment show.
was there any presentation of the results, anywhere, that ignored most of the data and focussed only on the swing states? that spent the rest of the time analyzing what had happened in the light of the clearly expected, accurately predicted result?