First, let’s look at voter turnout. It dropped to 129.2 million in 2012 from 131.5 million in 2008, according to David Leip’s
Atlas of U.S. Elections.
But the drop-off was not among conservatives.
According to exit polls, self-identified conservatives made up 35% of the 2012 turnout, and 82% of them voted for Mr. Romney. This translates into about 45.2 million conservatives who turned out—roughly 531,000 more than in 2008.
In 2008 conservatives were 34% of the turnout, and 78% voted for
John McCain. So Mr. Romney got around 2.2 million more conservative voters than Mr. McCain—and the conservative share of the 2012 electorate was the highest since exit polls began asking voters about their political leanings in 1976.
Here’s another way of looking at the electorate. The number of self-identified conservative voters rose to about 45.2 million in 2012 from 30.6 million in 2000. And the number of conservatives voting for the Republican presidential candidate rose to about 37.1 million in 2012 from 25.1 million in 2000.
Still, Mr. Romney would have needed an estimated 7.7 million additional conservative voters (assuming he took 82% of them) to beat President Obama. But that implies that conservative voters would have constituted nearly 39% of the turnout. This has never happened.
