Immediately after the November election, all of the reporting suggested that the Romney camp was in total shock. “Shell-shocked,” said one news report. It quoted a Romney senior adviser saying, “I don’t think there was one person who saw this coming.” Well, that wasn’t true—even within the Romney campaign. In “The Gamble,” Lynn Vavreck’s and my new book on the 2012 presidential race, we report that the Romney campaign’s own internal data showed that it would lose. [...] But after losing, the surprise and dismay within the Romney campaign seemed to stem less a failure of its own polls and more from a failure to let those polls take precedence over instinct and subjective judgment.
Well, that wasn’t true—even within the Romney campaign. In “The Gamble,” Lynn Vavreck’s and my new book on the 2012 presidential race, we report that the Romney campaign’s own internal data showed that it would lose. [...]
But after losing, the surprise and dismay within the Romney campaign seemed to stem less a failure of its own polls and more from a failure to let those polls take precedence over instinct and subjective judgment.
One of the big drivers here, unsurprisingly, was Tesla, whose sales rocketed up 8,056.25 percent this year, from 160 to 13,050. But sales of the Nissan Leaf have also shot up 208.44 percent, from 5,212 to 16,076. That’s particularly encouraging. Unlike Tesla’s admittedly fantastic high-end Model S, the Leaf is a realistic buy for the average American consumer. Its price is now down below $30,000, and can get below $20,000 with the help of tax credits. In raw numbers, total electric vehicle sales for 2013 are at 67,232, while they were just at 15,708 at this point last year.