Believe in Mitt: Faith and Republican Voter Turnout

     The approaching presidential election is uniquely significant: the minority vote is expected to be historically large and decisive, while overall voter turnout will likely drop to its lowest level in 8 years. This election also holds in its hands is the future of the Republican Party. As Obama has at least a 52 percentage point advantage over Romney in national Hispanic support--a very important source of votes in this election--in addition to other minority support, a victory for Obama might lead the GOP to investigate how it could garner more minority support.

     In spite of the importance of the minority vote in this election, the Romney campaign recognizes its deficiency in this area and is instead focusing on mobilizing Republican-leaning voters through faith. Journalist Ezra Klein of Washington Post writes that the Romney campaign "is emphasizing momentum. Confidence. Even inevitability." Inspiring faith in Republican voters is key to getting them to vote because--while most Republicans likely harbor strong negative sentiments towards the president--they may not go and vote if they feel their side will inevitably lose. Obama's lead in nationwide election polls has fluctuated since last February, only barely disappearing (according to a Real Clear Politics poll) at the beginning of October. Though these numbers demonstrate the increasing closeness of the race, Obama's constant lead in the polls and projected electoral college with no doubt discourages some Republicans, who fail to see the power of their vote. However, if the Romney campaign can make Republican-leaning voters believe that Romney will win, their desire to be a part of the victory can in itself draw them to the polls.

     The Romney campaign is trying to inspire this faith of an inevitable victory in different ways. One method involves simply claiming--through press statements, physical campaigning, or electronic communication with potential voters through social media--to have the majority of votes. The true origin of these claims--whether drawn from favorable polls out of the diverse  pool of polls, or simply manufactured numbers--is debatable. However, an uninformed voter might emotionally reason that such claims are true and unquestionable because of the confident tone with which they are expressed. An e-mail that I recently received from the Romney campaign demonstrates this point:

For the more informed voter--who may know that early voting results from a handful of key battleground states have depicted democratic victories--this e-mail's claim that Romney leads by a seven percent margin is difficult to swallow. This e-mail implies an unsettling answer to such voters' questioning: President Obama and his campaign are fixing the polls. It suggests that voters reading the e-mail trust Romney, not Obama or the press. This raises yet another technique that the Romney campaign is using to garner faith in their campaign: portraying the opposing candidate as dishonest, corrupt, and bound to lose. While the last two encouraged sentiments may be newer for Republicans, the first--that Obama is dishonest--is effective because it compounds Republican distrust for Obama, rooted in Obama's perceived failure to fulfill his promise of rebounding the economy, among other things. The Romney campaign believes inspiring these sentiments is in itself enough to mobilize Republican-leaning voters.