Talk Elections

That county is literally all rich white people.  If there is one county in the country that should swing hard Romney, that was it.  If there is any doubt of the Sandy effect, that result kills it. 

Yeah. As a New Jerseyan, it was prime territory for a Northeastern moderate to do really well. Instead, Romney gets anemic swings in CT, NY, MA, RI, VT, ME, and even NH, while actually doing worse in NJ. Obama was probably also helped in Maryland by the storm.

Here's a question; would Romney have won New Hampshire if not for Sandy?

No, NH has turned to the left in the same way VT has.  Its not that someone like Romney cant do relatively well in NH, which he did, he just doesnt have the votes anymore.

Romney didn't get that particular swing anywhere. We should just forget the theory that Romney appealed to these people.

I don't think anyone expected NJ to actually swing towards President Obama. At best, I thought he would replicate his 2008 performance. The state as a whole this year was the most Democratic margin since 1996 and the highest popular vote total since 1964. It seems apparent that if Romney couldn't at least swing NJ his way, his chances of winning really weren't that high. On a similar note, look at how Connecticut barely swung his way as well, which wasn't even near the single-digits it once polled at.

Census says median household income there is $59k. All richers?

Yes. As one of our best posters pointed out the other day, this election wasn't about him.

OC is a mix of rich olds and the trashy guido types that give Jersey its awful reputation.

Indeed. As I pointed out in the other NJ thread, the interesting results in NJ were not in Ocean County, but rather in urban North Jersey. Hudson County had one of the larger pro-Obama swings in the country, and all of the big Obama swings in NJ were in urban North Jersey counties (Hudson, Essex, Union, Passaic) plus suburban Middlesex.

Romney did in fact get hard swings in some wealthy suburban counties (mostly the whiter ones). Check out Chester and Bucks in PA.

This was a very interesting result, indeed.  I thought if anything Obama would see some swings in the more "progressive" blue collar SJ towns.  He did, but he got great MOVs in and around NYC.  I would not have guessed that one... this was supposed to be where Romney had appeal. 
http://mpregcentral.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=138263&topicID=41809869&p=3
The trashy guidos are merely the offspring of the rich olds.  This was prime Romney territory.  As noted, Romney did well in the more affluent parts of SE PA. 

No, this was a Sandy effect.  NJ voters swing on single issues like this all the time.  Gun control in 2000, 9/11 effect in 2004, nothing in particular in 2008... and now Sandy in 2012.  The only other states to swing his way were LA, MS, and AK.  The hurricane had the 2 point effect I said it would in an argument with Simfan.