Tamar Birkhead's Latest from the Huffington Post

Tamar Birkhead wrote an interesting piece on why President Obama won the election:

Why Obama Won: The Empathy Factor

During this election season, my young daughters posed many questions that were difficult to answer. What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Do politicians tell the truth? How do you decide which candidate to vote for?

I tried to give them meaningful answers that didn't oversimplify the issues at stake, but after a while, I resorted to shorthand. Democrats care about the poor. Republicans care about themselves. All politicians stretch the truth, but some do so more than others. Support the candidate who shares your values.

Following President Barack Obama's reelection to a second term, pundits have put forward various theories for why he won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, and why Gov. Mitt Romney lost.

We have heard that the president prevailed because he had a better ground game, that his staff and volunteers were more effective at getting out the vote than the governor. Some emphasize that he had the advantage of the incumbency and that he benefitted from Hurricane Sandy and Chris Christie's praise for the president's response to the storm.

Others say that it was Romney's election to lose, that he failed either because his policies were too conservative, turning off swing voters, or not conservative enough, failing to convince the right that he would protect their interests. Still others contend that the GOP and its funders -- big banks, corporations, and individuals like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and Karl Rove--miscalculated by assuming that citizen's votes could be readily purchased through misleading campaign ads or effectively suppressed through state-level ballot directives.

While there is some degree of truth to all these theories, the most compelling data is largely overlooked. Exit polling tells us that people who want a candidate who "cares about people like me" voted overwhelmingly for Obama -- over 80 percent. Further, 68 percent of those who say that Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy was important to them voted for the president. And 75 percent of those who view health care as the most important issue facing the country voted for him.

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