Turnout Breakdown for the 2012 Election.

Breaking down turnout for the 2012 election. Votes are still coming in so none of this is final. As of this point their were 9,418,343 fewer votes cast in this election than in 2008. With president Obama receiving 8,033,703 less and Gov. Romney receiving 1,384,640 votes less than McCain. I broke the country down into geographic regions and checked the vote totals from this election versus the 2008 election. The area's and results were as follows.

Red States(IN,KY,WV,TN,NC,MS,AL,GA,SC,LA,AR,MZ,TX,OK,KA,NE,SD,ND​,AZ,UT,WY,ID,MT,AK)-

Romney-24,565,537
Obama- 18,016,400

McCain-24,550,629
Obama- 19,651,053

A net loss of 1,598,653 for Obama from 2008 and a net gain of 14,908 for Gov Romney over McCain. This nearly 1.6 million vote drop in red states for Obama accounted for 17% of the total drop in turnout.


New England(DC,MD,DE,NJ,CT,RI,MA,VT,NH,ME,NY,PA)

Romney-9,987,418
Obama-14,382,609

McCain-10,769,887
Obama- 16,651,663

This is one of the two regions in which Romney under-performed McCain in '08. Netting a loss of 782,459 votes while the president lost 2,269,054 votes in this region from '08. Or 32% of the total drop in turnout.

West Coast + HI(CA,OR,WA,HI)

I had to extrapolate with WA since only 75% were in when I did the math. Ended up with 800,000 as 25% of the electorate for WA. Distributed at the same 55%-45% clip were 440,000 for Obama and 360,000 more for Romney.


Romney-5,983,264
Obama- 8,767,592

McCain-7,100,038
Obama- 11,388,483

This is the second and final region were Romney under-performed McCain. Netting a loss of 1,116,774 to the presidents loss of 2,620,891 votes from '08 in this region. Accounting for 41% of the decline in turnout.

Combined the New England and West coast regions accounted for 6,789,178 votes in the drop in turnout from '08. 4,889,995 for Obama and 1,898,933 for Romney. A total of 73% of the total drop in turnout came from these two regions.

Great Lakes + NM(IL,MI,WI,MN,NM)

Romney-7,265,025
Obama- 9,048,672

McCain-6,964,452
Obama- 10,014,914

In this region Romney gained 300,573 votes over McCain's '08 performance in the same region. Obama's number fell by 966,242. Representing 10% of the total drop.

Purple States(FL,OH,VA,IA,CO,NV)

Romney-10,833,083
Obama- 11,381,151

McCain-10,617,244
Obama- 11,832,902

In the purple state region chosen for arbitrary reasons and some geographic reasons. This region saw Romney improve on McCain's '08 totals by 215,839 votes. While the president slipped 451,751 votes from his count from the same region in '08. Accounting for less than 1% of the fall in turnout.



Had Romney equaled McCain's total in the New England and West Coast regions, he would have bettered McCain's '08 vote total by about 750,000 and still lost the popular vote to Obama by about 750,000. Obama bled off support in all 5 regions compared to '08. While Romney improved on McCain's numbers in 3 of 5 regions, while falling off significantly in the other 2.