Paul Ryan: Obama Won Because Of ‘Urban’ Areas

Paul Ryan is giving his take on why the GOP ticket lost the presidential election, saying that it was President Obama’s ability to get turnout in “urban” areas that made the difference.

“Well, he got turnout. The president should get credit for achieving record-breaking turnout numbers from urban areas for the most part, and that did win the election for him.” Ryan told local station WISC-TV. “There’s always an Electoral College strategy to winning these things, and you know what states you need to win to get to 270 electoral votes. When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, those as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.”

But Paul Ryan’s theory doesn’t exactly hold water, said Politico‘s James Hohmann. He notes that the Romney-Ryan ticket also lost in heavily rural and white states including Iowa and New Hampshire. The GOP also underperformed in Midwestern states, losing all battlegrounds in the region including Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin.

Paul Ryan’s focus on urban areas was present during the campaign as well, The Huffington Post noted. During the campaign he pressed for more appearances in inner cities to talk about how Republican ideas could lift people out of poverty, and he made an appearance in Cleveland .

The analysis is part of an on-going postmortem by the GOP to find out why Pres. Obama won re-election so easily. Aside from Paul Ryan’s theory about urban areas tipping the scales, Republicans have also blamed the president’s response to Hurricane Sandy and even voter suppression by the Democrats.