Is Romney's "gifts" comment accurate?

In a recent conference call of big-dollar donors, Romney explained why he had fallen short in his race for the Presidency by saying President Barack Obama had bribed liberal special interests with expensive gifts.  Here's a YouTube clip of the call.

Here’s what he said, according to The New York Times:

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift…Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008 … You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge … Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

Let's leave aside the politics and the normative question about whether this the right attitude for a second.  Let's also leave aside the question as to whether "gifts" as described by Romney are materially different from targeted tax cuts and other policy pronouncement by Romney himself.  Let's look at whether his underlying assessment of why he lost is true.

In this excellent post at the Washington Post, the examined precisely this question.  They examine how Obama did in 2012 with the constituencies that Romney mentions vs what he did in 2008.  I took the liberty of adding the 2004 data for Kerry from CNN's exit polls where available.  Here's the data:

Voters ages 18-29 [percent of overall vote: 19 percent in 2012, 18 percent in 2008; 17 percent in 2004]

2012: 60 percent       2008: 66 percent    2004: 54 percent

African Americans [percent of overall vote: 13 percent in 2012, 13 percent in 2008; 11 percent in 2004]

 2012:   93 percent    2008: 95 percent    2004: 88 percent

Hispanics [percent of overall vote: 10 percent in 2012, 9 percent in 2008; 8 percent in 2004]

 2012: 71 percent    2008: 67 percent    2004: 53 percent

Non-married women [percent of overall vote: 23 percent in 2012, 20 percent in 2008]

 2012: 67 percent   2008: 70 percent

In the Washington Post article, they conclude that this data conclusively proves that Romney's comment is wrong.  I am not as emphatic.

In one sense Romney has a point.  As seen above or as I posted earlier, Romney got less support among the young and among Hispanics relative to Bush in 2004.  

However, Romney appears to be suggesting that this is a new coalition persuaded by "gifts" to join Obama, i.e. that  these people were in Romney's camp and were won over by the "gifts".  In fact, this isn't correct.  In virtually every case, except Hispanics, Obama's support actually declined with the group in question relative to 2008, i.e. Obama had already built this coalition in 2008.  So, to believe Romney's comment, you'd have to believe that Romney was making significant inroads into Obama's 2008 coalition and that Obama offset Romney's advantage with gifts.  There is insufficient data to suggest this.  The simpler explanation is that Obama built a coalition in 2008 and did enough in his first term to satisfy the people who already supported him to continue to support him.  Since these people were already in Obama's camp, the key question for Romney is what did he do to win them over?