Election 2012: The Base Factor

From Buzzfeed:

Three Romney advisers told BuzzFeed the campaign's top priority now is to rally conservative Republicans, in hopes that they'll show up on Election Day, and drag their less politically-engaged friends with them. The earliest, ambiguous signal of this turn toward the party's right was the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate, a top Romney aide said.

"This is going to be a base election, and we need them to come out to vote," the aide said, explaining the pick.

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The campaigns' — and particularly Romney's — new focus on the base is driven by data. Recent public polls in major battleground states suggest the portion of the electorate that is truly undecided in this race is tiny, and shrinking. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed that, with seven weeks to go until election day, just 6 percent of Ohio voters are undecided; in Florida and Virginia, the figure is 5 percent. And, of course, there's no guarantee those people will turn out to vote at all.

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Nationally, the Romney is running the campaign his Boston team has claimed to be running all along: a conservative businessman, wielding a laser-like focus on unemployment, and a promise to bring the American economy roaring back with a five-step plan. It's a message the punditocracy approves of, and the Republican establishment is comfortable with. It's also the message that helped Romney win the fundraising war over the summer, with wealthy business leaders eager to write checks for one of their own.

But last week, Romney's stump speech — once an unchanging recitation of the campaign's economic talking points that clocked in reliably at 18 to 20 minutes every time — was in a constant state of flux, with the candidate tailoring his remarks to elicit as many applause lines as possible from the partisans in the room.

In heavily-Evangelical Sioux County, Iowa, Romney's introductory speakers — including conservative Rep. Steve King — sermonized at length about keeping Christian values, and vouched for his love of Jesus Christ. In Virginia Beach, he spoke to a flag-waving crowd of veterans and military families — appearing alongside televangelist Pat Robertson — and built his remarks around patriotism, defense spending, and keeping God on the national currency.