According to sources close to the Romney campaign, the presidential candidate didn’t know what to make of the election results. He was described as “shellshocked,” by an advisor who spoke anonymously to CBS News. The former governor just really hadn’t thought about the possibility of losing and that was difficult for him to grapple with.
It was apparently tense for the campaign as the election results were coming in. As more and more electoral votes came in for Obama, the campaign saw fewer and fewer options for making a victory happen. What’s really fascinating is that the campaign didn’t rely on any polling that showed Obama winning anywhere. In fact, they used internal polling. While they claimed these polls weren’t skewed and more accurate than national data, that was obviously not the case when all was said and done.
If anyone in the campaign had bothered to look at national numbers, they would have seen all of the major polling aggregators showing Obama winning by a wide margin. Again, however, they didn’t do this, which explains why Romney, Ryan and both of their wives were so shocked. Apparently, Romney’s wife Ann cried.
The campaign was prepared to hold out and wait to concede until all of the numbers were in but Romney made the call to do so after admitting there was no way to obtain victory. He had to quickly write a concession speech then head down to address his supporters. This is likely to be his last attempt at the presidency.
The campaign had been so convinced that Romney would win, however, that there were plans to fire off eight minutes worth of fireworks over Boston Harbor. It’s sort of unbelievable in retrospect, especially considering by how wide of a margin Obama won by.
Really, a glance at the polling numbers might have been helpful in avoiding some embarrassment.