Category: National Politics

Presidential – (1144 delegates to win) Romney 107, Santorum 45, Gingrich 32, Ron Paul 9, Huntsman 2, Perry 2

The Republican Presidential contest is back to square one, so to speak.  Despite the fact that three of the four contests held this past week were in states Mitt Romney carried in his 2008 Presidential quest, he only managed to carry Nevada, and even then, he essentially matched his 2008 showing.

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Even though (from a delegate count perspective, anyway), the Republican Presidential race is only 6% “complete”, the conclusion of the Florida primary is a signal that the nomination contest has entered into a new phase. This is because Florida was the first contest in which the Republican electorate was a mosaic of different ethnicities and ideologies (southerners in the Panhandle, Midwestern retirees along the southwestern Gulf Coast, northeastern retirees along the Atlantic coast, young families in Central Florida, and staunchly anti-Communist Cubans in Miami) dispersed across 10 media markets.

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Rarely has a Presidential primary hinged both on a news reporter’s question, as well as the word “maybe.” Yet, the combination of these two items less than 48 hours before Saturday’s balloting during the GOP debate provided the fuel for Newt Gingrich’s 40-28% victory over Mitt Romney in South Carolina. This basically was a landslide: Romney was reduced to pluralities in three (out of 46) counties, and Saturday’s 601K voter turnout was about 33% higher than it was in the 2008 Republican primary (it’s also worth noting that the Republican primary in New Hampshire had 5% higher turnout than in 2008).

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Now that the Iowa caucus has concluded with an eight vote “victory” for Mitt Romney, what are we to conclude from the results?  It is true that Mitt Romney “won” Iowa; however, if you look at the data, you realize that his victory was not that remarkable. For one thing, he essentially maintained his 2008 electoral position: he received almost the exact number of votes that he got in 2008, and he received the same 25% of the vote that he got in 2008. Additionally, Romney in 2008 had to compete against John McCain and Rudy Giuliani for the more moderate/liberal Republican voter demographic: in that election, 41% of Iowans voted for one of those three candidates. This time, Romney had that vote all to himself, so in a sense, his electoral position has slipped since 2008. You could also make the argument that conservative voters are more energized this time around.

Tonight was a very good night for the Republicans, as they were victorious in Congressional special elections that were held both in New York and Nevada. The New York race was nothing short of an upset of Scott Brown proportions, so we will focus on that race today.