Speaking for the first time for a sit-down interview since his lost last November, Mitt Romney told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that he truly thought he was going to win on Election Day, but first reports out of Florida gave him concern:
The exit polls came out first, and, suggested that it was going to be very close in Florida and we thought we'd win solidly in Florida and it was increasingly clear that this was going to be with the best case scenario, a long night.
Let's be clear though – even though Florida ultimately proved meaningless in last year's election (the election results weren't final until four days later), the conventional wisdom among most political pundits thoughout 2012 (including even by the great Nate Silver,who wrote on his 538 New York Times blog the night before the election that "Florida remains too close to call.") was that Romney would take Florida. In the end, most obviously underestimated Team Obama's ground game, something that Ann Romney referred to when asked why Mitt lost.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2013.