1. 2012 was not a narrow Democratic victory by any means. Obama won the national popular vote by 3.9% (RCP average was +0.7 nationwide for Obama), and he won every swing state except NC, which he lost by 2%. Amongst the swing states he won, aside from Florida, Obama won all the others by 3%+.
Historically speaking, 2012 was a pretty close PV margin. The majority of presidential PV’s have been decided by greater than 5%.
However, the structure of the EC that year gave Democrats a substantial advantage, and Romney’s share of the PV was very inefficient. Romney was actually leading in the PV when the election was called for Obama, and most networks were even predicting that Romney would wind up winning the PV in the early morning hours of November 7.
The GOP establishment plan for the 2016 cycle was to follow Romney's model and tweak it, the difference is they would cater to Hispanics & Suburban Dems instead of their base. It was actually a very Hillary-esque strategy, Hillary tried to court suburban GOP and ignored her base. Going by that template; base turnout would've been lower for GOP & that strategy would've similarly failed. Hillary would've stuck to imitating Obama 2012 in her original GE plan.
Romney's model was never a good model though, Mccain was doing far better in '08 before the economic crisis than Romney ever did. If they wanted to follow Mccain, they would've backed someone like Kasich instead.
