Originally Posted By skinnerbox <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/01/11/402273/romney-relied-on-wealthy-voters-with-upscale-interests-like-gourmet-cooking-to-win-new-hampshire" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/polit...ampshire</a> <> GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally secured victory in the New Hampshire primary last night, becoming the first Republican to win both New Hampshire and the Iowa caucus. Incidentally, Romney has many of the wealthiest Granite Staters to thank. Putting his considerable war chest towards micro-targeted voter contact, Romney mined for and turned out his “sweet spot” voters — high-income Americans “with upscale interests like gourmet cooking”: Flush with cash as other rivals limped through the summer and fall, the Romney team poured resources into data: Operatives mined reams of consumer information — from the number of purchases voters made at Williams-Sonoma to their range of financial investments — to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters. [...] Romney’s operatives paired the voter data with several hundred thousand paid and volunteer calls. They knew his sweet spot was among older, higher-income voters — those with annual household incomes of between $75,000 and $150,000 and with upscale interests like gourmet cooking. He was particularly appealing to older women and did best — as they knew from 2008 — among self-identified Republicans. Indeed, as BuzzFeed points out, Romney gained only 4 percent from voters earning less than $100,000 between 2008 and 2012, but he gained 14 percent from people making more than $100,000 in the same time span. <> More at the link. This isn't a surprise to anyone paying attention. But it does make me wonder if the Romney campaign's research team and their consumer data is driving the changes at Clear Channel radio stations owned by Bain Capital, such as AM960 in San Francisco. The typical Romney voter in New Hampshire fits the profile of the typical progressive talk listener in the Bay Area, at least in terms of household income, consumer behavior, and personal interests. With only that information to go on, it almost seems logical to swap out or eliminate progressive talk in areas with a high percentage of this demographic. Of course, the Romney dimwits fail to realize that you can't swing a dead cat anywhere in the immediate Bay Area -- AM960's broadcast range -- without hitting a die-hard liberal. I'm surrounded by the one-percent where I currently live, and they're just as progressive as I am. Nothing is going to change that. Glenn Beck can yammer during AM960's morning drive time all he wants... but only the established listeners who heard him on AM910 will tune in. The rest of us have already switched to another station's smartphone stream or the SiriusXM Left channel to hear the progressive talk that Clear Channel pushed into the late night hours.
