Holy cow, that’s quite a bounce for Newt! (And I can’t believe I’m rooting for the old crackpot!)
Forget the delegate counts: these early primaries are much more important in terms of what they show about the viability of the respective candidates than for the delegates they deliver. Florida’s fifty delegates may be big now, but it’ll be dwarfed when March rolls around.
The silver lining for Romney is twofold: if he somehow manages to come from behind and nuke Newt in Florida, Newt’s pretty much dead: he doesn’t have a lot of margin of error. But if Newt wins in FL, there’s not a whole lot on the calendar between now and March 6, so Mitt’s got some time to get his act together.
But that doesn’t mean either thing will happen. I’m starting to think Mitt’s millions may not suffice to win him this battle.
With apologies to Dylan:
Big Mitt was no one’s fool, he owned the town’s only diamond mine
He made his usual entrance, looking so dandy and so fine
With his bodyguards and silver cane, and every hair in place
He took whatever he wanted to, and he laid it all to waste
But his bodyguards and silver cane were no match for the Newt of 'Grich.
I think Gingrich will win Florida. He was polling 50% there in December and now that he has proved himself in SC, those voters will rush back to him. He has two debates with which to sustain his momentum and probably won’t need too much paid media. McCain didn’t have much money or organization when he won Florida in 2008.
February will be a tough month for Newt, though, with states like Nevada and Arizona. He will have to figure out how to stay competitive while building an organization and raising money for Super Tuesday. It will be tough but he has a genuine shot.
Also, Romney’s advantage nationally has disappeared. Gallup’s national 5-day polling average has Romney’s lead down to 29-28, and that has to be regarded as a trailing indicator right now. I’d love to see their numbers for just yesterday.
Yeah the race seems to be moving back to where it was in December. The GOP estabishment will have to organize another beatdown against Newt. Perhaps a Jeb Bush endorsement for Romney? I also wonder if a few money men will quietly fund Santorum to keep him in the race as long as possible to attack Newt.
I doubt that Mitt will be able to make himself look any better.
However, he might eventually stumble on an attack on Newt that actually works.
The question (partly responding to Lantern here) is whether the GOP establishment, Romney and his Super-PAC, etc., haven’t more or less inoculated Newt against most attacks. They’ve already thrown the kitchen sink at him, and it isn’t working.
Or maybe, given enough time and overconfidence, Newt will find a way to self-destruct.
Those will be proportionally won though. Sort of like Clinton winning California by a few percent in 2008. “Yay, I won the biggest state!” – except it netted her something like +4 delegates. Unless one candidate is blowing the other out of the water (like how Obama ran up the caucus states), it’ll be hard to seriously pull ahead. A 50 point head start will be pretty huge… until April when the states go “Winner Takes All” starting with Texas.
If Romney wins FL, I don’t see much remaining for Newt. If Newt wins, it’ll be hard for Romney to command a significant lead until April.
The Republicans and the Democrats have vastly different means of turning popular vote counts into delegate counts. The Dems have tilted heavily towards statewide proportional allocation of delegates in primary states; the GOP, not so much.
In GOP primaries, most states use at least a partial winner-take-all (WTA) mechanism. In the GOP system of determining how many delegates a state has, some delegates are attributed to each congressional district (CD), and some are attributed to the state as a whole. A state might be WTA in its entirety, or WTA with a 50% threshold, or might assign its delegates in each CD on a WTA basis for that district, and ditto statewide, or it might do the statewide delegates proportionally but do the CD delegates on a district-level WTA basis, etc. But only a handful of states allocate their delegates proportionally statewide.
Confusing, eh?
The only source I could find for which states allocate their delegates by what means is here. I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it seems pretty thorough and up-to-date.
If it’s correct, California, which has the most delegates, does WTA in each CD and for its statewide delegates, while Texas, with the second-largest number, allocates its delegates proportionally. New York, with the third-most delegates, is WTA for those CDs (and for the statewide delegates) where the winner clears 50%; where nobody gets 50%, it distributes the delegates proportionally.
It allows a primary winner to gain a heavy majority of the delegates in a state. For instance, Newt got 23 of South Carolina’s 25 delegates, even though it’s not a pure WTA state, but rather uses the same breakdown as California does.
So there is lots of room for wide swings in the delegate count in most states.
Tonight’s debate didn’t have the KO people were expecting. I will say, I suspect the phrase “self-deportation” is likely to create a lot of problems for Romney.
At this point it appears the primary is Newt’s to lose. Romney will probably make it a tight contest.
I don’t see Paul having much impact.
And the former Senator from Pennsylvania doesn’t have much of an organization in the state. Santorum will really have to be spread thin to see any results there. I think this could create a sticky situation for everyone.
I have been mildly surprised at just how mediocre Romney has been in these debates. His counter attacks are ham-fisted and completely unoriginal, he has nothing but canned statements for softball questions like “Why should conservatives vote for you?”, and when he’s playing defense he just stumbles through a series of pre-recorded platitudes. When that mediocrity is contrasted with Gingrich–who, with his ability to turn the entire conversation on a dime, seems to be holding the audience in the palm of his hand–it becomes an even bigger lodestone.
I’m not convinced that debates really matter much in the general election, but they sure seem to have made a difference in the primaries. Based on that, I agree Florida is Newt’s to lose.
Yeah, if Mitt Romney couldn’t beat John McCain – not exactly someone who lights up a room himself – in 2008, what’s so New and Improved about him this year?
I know this is wrong, but this stuff is so entertaining. I get wound up every election year. RTFirefly, pass me the popcorn?
