IndepCentristMA
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I. Romney IS winning, and getting the full support of his party: Romney IS a strong candidate.
So much idle talk is put out there, about how Mitt Romney hasn't "sealed the deal", "yet". Most hotly contested races aren't sealed at this point. It took Obama until June to get the nomination, and yet his advisors are out there pushing the storyline that Mitt Romney's inability to "seal the deal" shows how he doesn't have full support of his party. Other Romney opponents are trying to use the same logic, namely Santorum.
The truth is, historically, at this point most candidates have not wrapped up the nomination. Last go around Romney dropped out unexpectedly, which left McCain and Huckabee. While McCain had a huge lead, he didn’t wrap up the nomination officially until May. Huckabee for his part came real close to catching up with McCain. On the other side of the aisle, Obama didn’t wrap up the nomination until June, when Hillary dropped out after losing a few large primaries. Even running unopposed right now as the incumbent President, Obama only has 1670 of the 2778 delegates needed to officially wrap up his party’s nomination. That is the nature of current campaigns. The ability to get your message out to the media, and the divides fracturing the larger parties make it so candidates can remain in a race with large support, but still be trailing behind, whereas in the past, they were financially forced to drop out.
However, when you consider that with 4 candidates vying not to exit the election, the vote is being split four ways -- that would be around 25% a piece if this were an even race. Mitt Romney has won about half of the races, half of the delegates, and half of the vote. He has won more states, more delegates, and gotten more votes than the other 3 combined. He has a COMMANDING lead.
Further, his wins come just as convincing by winning nearly all of the key battleground states in the general election (NH, FL, AZ, MI, OH, VA), nearly all of the winner-take-all contests so far (FL, AZ, and the de facto winner-take-all results in MA, VA, ID, and the terrirories of PR, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands), and won all three hotly contested must win states for his campaign (FL, MI, and OH), after supposedly trailing in the polls.
He has had a surge every time he shows up to compete, including his surge in the South once he went down there. Exit polls even show some counties, which supported him heavily, had a low turn-out, suggesting if he didn’t leave to go to MO and NY and stayed around to rally the vote, he might have even won in MS.
Romney has also won several come from behind victories, including winning the key state of FL after losing handily in SC to Gingrich, the supposed state which picks all the winners. He was dead in MI by double digits in the polls and still won, he was dead in OH by double digits and still won. Every time they say Romney is weak, he scores a big win.
However, he has a broad support and has won all over the country. He even was the first non-incumbent candidate to sweep IA and NH to start the campaign (until weeks later it was declared that Santorum would win by 40 votes because of some votes which weren’t counted). When the Romney machine gets rolling on all cylinders it is tough to beat.
Still with all the delegates currently collected, Romney only has to win 45% of the remaining delegates to wrap up the nomination, and he is currently winning just that. His closest opponent, Santorum, would have to win 66.6% of the remaining delegates (not a good omen for the supposed Christian conservative). The bad news for Santorum is there is no game changer in sight.
In most of the delegate heavy areas remaining Romney is favored, such as IL, NY, NJ, CA, etc. Most of the races will award delegates proportionately, and with the “win” in MS, we saw how that went, where Romney “lost” but took home the same number of delegates. Even if it were to carry on until June, Romney is favored in CA, and is favored in the winner-take-all contests in NJ and UT to wrap it up. The only way Santorum catches Romney is if Romney steps in do-do -- the kind of sudden campaign collapse which has effected candidates in the past, most notably Gary Hart, and I don’t see Romney having a Gary Hart moment.
Everyone wants to speak of his trouble with "Evangelicals" and the geographic area of the "South". He just went down there, almost won both states, and walked away with nearly as many delegates as the two candidates Santorum and Gingrich who were on home turf. He even won the majority of delegates on the night, with the combined results of others primaries and caucuses elsewhere. Even those in the party who aren’t voting for him, say almost hands down they will vote for him in the general election, not only as a sign of support for their party, but given the other motivation to oust Obama. I don’t see him ever getting resounding support by the Evangelicals that Bush got, or that Santorum is getting. However, I’m fairly certain he is winning over most of them as enough of a pill to swallow when It comes to an outright matchup with Obama that they will be willing to go to bat for him at the polls in November.
Besides, the focus is on the vocal "base" of the party, who only make up 12% of the vote. That's not where the actual base of the party is. There is actually a real base of the Republican Party, the mainstream Republicans. They make up about 25-30% of the vote. Those mainstream Republicans want Mitt Romney, and would rather focus on jobs and the economy. In most of these races Republicans are voting in favor of Mitt Romney. In polls independents are favoring Romney to Obama (although the numbers swing back and forth). So to say Romney isn't winning over "the base", doesn't mean Romney doesn't have a majority support of his party, or enough support for a run in the general election.
Unfortunately, what's keeping the race close is the understated influence of the Democrats who are voting in open primaries for Santorum, because they fear Romney. Santorum, would like to claim them as Reagan Democrats, but everyone knows the real intention. It is an organized effort to keep the Republican primary process going, so the Republicans beat each other up and can’t focus on Obama. They even had organized efforts with named operation, notably Hilarity. They further targeted operations of the same sort in Super Tuesday contests in VT, TN and ND. They even attempted to assist Gingrich in winning GA.
In exit polls, self identified Democrats constituted 9% of the vote in MI, where Romney won by 3%. Of that 9% they went over 50% to Santorum with the other candidates splitting about 15% each. By Republicans alone, Romney won by 11 points over Santorum, and he won Independents by 1 point (which I’m sure included a lot of liberal independents). If the results went that route, it would’ve rightly been reported as a HUGE victory in MI, rather than a close victory.
Similarly in Ohio, 5% of the vote self-identified as Democrats, and they went heavily to Santorum. What was reported as a late Romney victory, after most people had gone to bed, could likely have been an early call in favor of Romney, and a win by several points. Exit polls showed Romney won Republicans by 4 pts in OH. In Ohio, 29% of the vote was by self-indentified independents, but, somehow, Santorum’s opinion among independents soared in OH, compared to other states. That was likely the result of liberal independents jumping into the race.
Then in the South, something else happened. Santorum snuck by Gingrich, by margins lower than the likely bump Santorum got by Democrats. In MS 4% of the vote self identified as Democrat, and Santorum won by 2%. In AL 6% self-identified as Democrat, where Santorum won by 6%. In TN, 5% of the vote was Democratic in favor of Santorum.
While these votes may not have changed the ultimate outcome of any of those races, they certainly made the margin of victory seem smaller than it actually was. They have also certainly bolstered the delegate count in favor of Santorum, where he would’ve lost a lot more of them in the Northern states, and lost them to Gingrich in the Southern States. Hence, Romney’s sizeable delegate lead, realistically, without Democratic tampering is significantly larger.
When the general election comes around, Mitt Romney will have full support of his party. In addition to that, his message of a focus on the economy will switch from the alienating divisive social issues that Santorum is dragging down the party with, and he will become attractive again to those independents who favored Romney to Obama heavily up until mid-Jan.
Mitt Romney is a strong candidate, who has the support of the 25-30% who are mainstream Republicans. He will like get most if not all of the 10-12% of the so called “Tea Party” vote, if only for their ardent opposition to Obama. He also does well with Independents in most polls, when he sticks on the message of the economy, and could carry between 5-15% of them. This broad support bodes well for the general election.
II. If Gingrich drops out of the race, Santorum does not get ALL of Gringrich's support.
The only thing which likely could change the dynamic of the Republican Primary, would be if one of the candidates dropped out. Common belief is that if Gringrich and Santorum's vote were combined, then the conservative vote would be combined, then there would be a large enough base to beat Romney.
There is a major flaw with that logic. Not ALL of any candidates backers favor one candidate over another. Most of a campaign's backers favor just that candidate. That was noticeable with such high numbers of votes in OH for candidates who were no longer campaigning in the race (Huntsman & Perry).
A recent poll suggests that if Gingrich dropped out of the race, his vote would be split evenly between Romney and Santorum. The poll, conducted by gallop, of Gingrich supporters, asked if Gingrich dropped out, who would be their second choice. 40% said Romney, 39% said Santorum, 12% said Paul, with 10% having no opinion.
Romney, Santorum Tie as Gingrich Voters' Second Choice
Many of those who expressed no opinion may either likely not vote in the primary or keep voting for Gingrich anyway. However, even if Santorum were able to convince all of the undecided, and some of the Romney supporters over to his side, he still would not be getting enough of a bump to overtake the lead that Romney currently has established.
The only game change which Gingrich dropping out would do, would be to put Romney's support up over the 50% threshold that is what people keep dragging their feet about saying he has the nomination wrapped up over. There would cease to exist any convention talk if that were the case.
Contrarily, if Santorum had dropped out, Gingrich would likely not have gotten ALL of Santorum's vote either. Thus, he may not have been able to pull of this "Southern Strategy" that he claimed he was pursuing. Personally, I feel Gingrich had a better shot of closing in on Romney had that occurred. If Santorum was out, Gingrich could've taken all the Southern voting, and then likely won Texas, and could challenge Romney in California. Santorum doesn't stand a chance of catching Romney in California, given his views, and he won't fair well in NY, NJ, IL either with that same outlook. People like Palin tried to get behind Gingrich, but to no avail, he as well won’t be able to unite all the vote against Romney.
All you have now is a conundrum. People are going to stay in, they will continue to get about the same support, give or take 5% points here or there, and the race will stay along these lines. Romney will build a significant enough delegate lead, that he will come close to the 1144 needed. Even if he doesn't get there, no other candidate will be close enough to claim themselves as a viable alternative in Tampa. So if nothing changes, it would still be likely a beleaguered Mitt Romney who gets appointed.
The real game change may come by the very voters themselves. Multiple polls have shown that people are getting tired of this race. With a few more Romney wins, such as picking up Puerto Rico, and the potential win in IL on Tuesday, that may spark the trend of voters going towards Romney, if only just to get this over with. If I were in the Romney camp, I would be out there trying to force that trend by promoting the phrase “any vote for Santorum is a vote for Obama”.
So much idle talk is put out there, about how Mitt Romney hasn't "sealed the deal", "yet". Most hotly contested races aren't sealed at this point. It took Obama until June to get the nomination, and yet his advisors are out there pushing the storyline that Mitt Romney's inability to "seal the deal" shows how he doesn't have full support of his party. Other Romney opponents are trying to use the same logic, namely Santorum.
The truth is, historically, at this point most candidates have not wrapped up the nomination. Last go around Romney dropped out unexpectedly, which left McCain and Huckabee. While McCain had a huge lead, he didn’t wrap up the nomination officially until May. Huckabee for his part came real close to catching up with McCain. On the other side of the aisle, Obama didn’t wrap up the nomination until June, when Hillary dropped out after losing a few large primaries. Even running unopposed right now as the incumbent President, Obama only has 1670 of the 2778 delegates needed to officially wrap up his party’s nomination. That is the nature of current campaigns. The ability to get your message out to the media, and the divides fracturing the larger parties make it so candidates can remain in a race with large support, but still be trailing behind, whereas in the past, they were financially forced to drop out.
However, when you consider that with 4 candidates vying not to exit the election, the vote is being split four ways -- that would be around 25% a piece if this were an even race. Mitt Romney has won about half of the races, half of the delegates, and half of the vote. He has won more states, more delegates, and gotten more votes than the other 3 combined. He has a COMMANDING lead.
Further, his wins come just as convincing by winning nearly all of the key battleground states in the general election (NH, FL, AZ, MI, OH, VA), nearly all of the winner-take-all contests so far (FL, AZ, and the de facto winner-take-all results in MA, VA, ID, and the terrirories of PR, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands), and won all three hotly contested must win states for his campaign (FL, MI, and OH), after supposedly trailing in the polls.
He has had a surge every time he shows up to compete, including his surge in the South once he went down there. Exit polls even show some counties, which supported him heavily, had a low turn-out, suggesting if he didn’t leave to go to MO and NY and stayed around to rally the vote, he might have even won in MS.
Romney has also won several come from behind victories, including winning the key state of FL after losing handily in SC to Gingrich, the supposed state which picks all the winners. He was dead in MI by double digits in the polls and still won, he was dead in OH by double digits and still won. Every time they say Romney is weak, he scores a big win.
However, he has a broad support and has won all over the country. He even was the first non-incumbent candidate to sweep IA and NH to start the campaign (until weeks later it was declared that Santorum would win by 40 votes because of some votes which weren’t counted). When the Romney machine gets rolling on all cylinders it is tough to beat.
Still with all the delegates currently collected, Romney only has to win 45% of the remaining delegates to wrap up the nomination, and he is currently winning just that. His closest opponent, Santorum, would have to win 66.6% of the remaining delegates (not a good omen for the supposed Christian conservative). The bad news for Santorum is there is no game changer in sight.
In most of the delegate heavy areas remaining Romney is favored, such as IL, NY, NJ, CA, etc. Most of the races will award delegates proportionately, and with the “win” in MS, we saw how that went, where Romney “lost” but took home the same number of delegates. Even if it were to carry on until June, Romney is favored in CA, and is favored in the winner-take-all contests in NJ and UT to wrap it up. The only way Santorum catches Romney is if Romney steps in do-do -- the kind of sudden campaign collapse which has effected candidates in the past, most notably Gary Hart, and I don’t see Romney having a Gary Hart moment.
Everyone wants to speak of his trouble with "Evangelicals" and the geographic area of the "South". He just went down there, almost won both states, and walked away with nearly as many delegates as the two candidates Santorum and Gingrich who were on home turf. He even won the majority of delegates on the night, with the combined results of others primaries and caucuses elsewhere. Even those in the party who aren’t voting for him, say almost hands down they will vote for him in the general election, not only as a sign of support for their party, but given the other motivation to oust Obama. I don’t see him ever getting resounding support by the Evangelicals that Bush got, or that Santorum is getting. However, I’m fairly certain he is winning over most of them as enough of a pill to swallow when It comes to an outright matchup with Obama that they will be willing to go to bat for him at the polls in November.
Besides, the focus is on the vocal "base" of the party, who only make up 12% of the vote. That's not where the actual base of the party is. There is actually a real base of the Republican Party, the mainstream Republicans. They make up about 25-30% of the vote. Those mainstream Republicans want Mitt Romney, and would rather focus on jobs and the economy. In most of these races Republicans are voting in favor of Mitt Romney. In polls independents are favoring Romney to Obama (although the numbers swing back and forth). So to say Romney isn't winning over "the base", doesn't mean Romney doesn't have a majority support of his party, or enough support for a run in the general election.
Unfortunately, what's keeping the race close is the understated influence of the Democrats who are voting in open primaries for Santorum, because they fear Romney. Santorum, would like to claim them as Reagan Democrats, but everyone knows the real intention. It is an organized effort to keep the Republican primary process going, so the Republicans beat each other up and can’t focus on Obama. They even had organized efforts with named operation, notably Hilarity. They further targeted operations of the same sort in Super Tuesday contests in VT, TN and ND. They even attempted to assist Gingrich in winning GA.
In exit polls, self identified Democrats constituted 9% of the vote in MI, where Romney won by 3%. Of that 9% they went over 50% to Santorum with the other candidates splitting about 15% each. By Republicans alone, Romney won by 11 points over Santorum, and he won Independents by 1 point (which I’m sure included a lot of liberal independents). If the results went that route, it would’ve rightly been reported as a HUGE victory in MI, rather than a close victory.
Similarly in Ohio, 5% of the vote self-identified as Democrats, and they went heavily to Santorum. What was reported as a late Romney victory, after most people had gone to bed, could likely have been an early call in favor of Romney, and a win by several points. Exit polls showed Romney won Republicans by 4 pts in OH. In Ohio, 29% of the vote was by self-indentified independents, but, somehow, Santorum’s opinion among independents soared in OH, compared to other states. That was likely the result of liberal independents jumping into the race.
Then in the South, something else happened. Santorum snuck by Gingrich, by margins lower than the likely bump Santorum got by Democrats. In MS 4% of the vote self identified as Democrat, and Santorum won by 2%. In AL 6% self-identified as Democrat, where Santorum won by 6%. In TN, 5% of the vote was Democratic in favor of Santorum.
While these votes may not have changed the ultimate outcome of any of those races, they certainly made the margin of victory seem smaller than it actually was. They have also certainly bolstered the delegate count in favor of Santorum, where he would’ve lost a lot more of them in the Northern states, and lost them to Gingrich in the Southern States. Hence, Romney’s sizeable delegate lead, realistically, without Democratic tampering is significantly larger.
When the general election comes around, Mitt Romney will have full support of his party. In addition to that, his message of a focus on the economy will switch from the alienating divisive social issues that Santorum is dragging down the party with, and he will become attractive again to those independents who favored Romney to Obama heavily up until mid-Jan.
Mitt Romney is a strong candidate, who has the support of the 25-30% who are mainstream Republicans. He will like get most if not all of the 10-12% of the so called “Tea Party” vote, if only for their ardent opposition to Obama. He also does well with Independents in most polls, when he sticks on the message of the economy, and could carry between 5-15% of them. This broad support bodes well for the general election.
II. If Gingrich drops out of the race, Santorum does not get ALL of Gringrich's support.
The only thing which likely could change the dynamic of the Republican Primary, would be if one of the candidates dropped out. Common belief is that if Gringrich and Santorum's vote were combined, then the conservative vote would be combined, then there would be a large enough base to beat Romney.
There is a major flaw with that logic. Not ALL of any candidates backers favor one candidate over another. Most of a campaign's backers favor just that candidate. That was noticeable with such high numbers of votes in OH for candidates who were no longer campaigning in the race (Huntsman & Perry).
A recent poll suggests that if Gingrich dropped out of the race, his vote would be split evenly between Romney and Santorum. The poll, conducted by gallop, of Gingrich supporters, asked if Gingrich dropped out, who would be their second choice. 40% said Romney, 39% said Santorum, 12% said Paul, with 10% having no opinion.
Romney, Santorum Tie as Gingrich Voters' Second Choice
Many of those who expressed no opinion may either likely not vote in the primary or keep voting for Gingrich anyway. However, even if Santorum were able to convince all of the undecided, and some of the Romney supporters over to his side, he still would not be getting enough of a bump to overtake the lead that Romney currently has established.
The only game change which Gingrich dropping out would do, would be to put Romney's support up over the 50% threshold that is what people keep dragging their feet about saying he has the nomination wrapped up over. There would cease to exist any convention talk if that were the case.
Contrarily, if Santorum had dropped out, Gingrich would likely not have gotten ALL of Santorum's vote either. Thus, he may not have been able to pull of this "Southern Strategy" that he claimed he was pursuing. Personally, I feel Gingrich had a better shot of closing in on Romney had that occurred. If Santorum was out, Gingrich could've taken all the Southern voting, and then likely won Texas, and could challenge Romney in California. Santorum doesn't stand a chance of catching Romney in California, given his views, and he won't fair well in NY, NJ, IL either with that same outlook. People like Palin tried to get behind Gingrich, but to no avail, he as well won’t be able to unite all the vote against Romney.
All you have now is a conundrum. People are going to stay in, they will continue to get about the same support, give or take 5% points here or there, and the race will stay along these lines. Romney will build a significant enough delegate lead, that he will come close to the 1144 needed. Even if he doesn't get there, no other candidate will be close enough to claim themselves as a viable alternative in Tampa. So if nothing changes, it would still be likely a beleaguered Mitt Romney who gets appointed.
The real game change may come by the very voters themselves. Multiple polls have shown that people are getting tired of this race. With a few more Romney wins, such as picking up Puerto Rico, and the potential win in IL on Tuesday, that may spark the trend of voters going towards Romney, if only just to get this over with. If I were in the Romney camp, I would be out there trying to force that trend by promoting the phrase “any vote for Santorum is a vote for Obama”.
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