No, not at all. But they’d be in better shape if they had a front-runner who could-- when you look at all he had going for him on paper-- not almost lose his home state, son.
The perception is still that he barely won a state were he had so many advantages, i am not so certain this is a boost.
Let’s not go nuts over this “home state” thing, by the way. George Romney was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and Mitt Romney was born and raised in Michigan but I don’t think he’s lived there since the late '60s. Primary candidates do not always win their birth states or home states.
It beats the alternative. They’d have preferred to win by a lot, but the way things were going, he was either going to win by a little bit or lose by a little bit. Winning is better.
Okay, tell that to Mitt Romney. He’s the one who’s been talking about it ad nauseum it for the past several months, convincing Michiganders he’s one of us. He built it up as his home state-- as have the media-- now he gets to look like a weak road apple for almost losing it to Rick Freaking Santorum. Pointing this out isn’t actually “going nuts” about it.
For Santorum to have won, he needed to make hay and overwhelmingly win in all of those little counties. That’s where a lot of his votes were being pulled from.
…Well, that and Democrats.
I was saying it shouldn’t be made too much of, not that you were going nuts. I’m sorry if I implied that. And yes, I know Romney has played up his ties to Michigan and it’s properly-sized trees. It’s something every candidate does at every opportunity no matter how silly it looks, so it doesn’t mean very much except that in Romney’s case, it would have been a factor in coverage of an embarassing loss. In 2008 the Democrats couldn’t stop talking about Joe Biden’s connection to Scranton, Pennsylvania even though he hadn’t lived there in something like 55 years. I think Mitt Romney lives in New Hampshire these days and he certainly has more ties to Massachusetts than Michigan, and he’ll win Massachusetts. From what I can see, the thing that mattered for him is that there were enough moderates in Oakland County to overcome the more socially conservative voters in the rest of the state, who preferred Santorum. That Mitt Romney happened to grow up there is pretty much a coincidence: I don’t think many people were ever going to vote for him because he lived there 40 years ago or because his father was governor around that same time.
As a political scientist, I’m getting pretty tired of media throwing around this ‘momentum’ thing left and right. While it is possible that something that people perceive as a Romney victory might inspire them to vote for Romney, there is often very little proper evidence for a bandwagon effect really being at work. It is really just a poor metaphor that often works poorly when you translate it to what it would mean for individual voters and their voting calculus. I read a lot of the 538 blog, which I generally like, but they overuse this term a lot, and offer poor explanations to boot. For instance, they’ll say things like “Much of the reason for the relatively clear lead for Mr. Gingrich is that he has very clear momentum in the race.” - in other words, more people are voting for Gingrich because more people are voting for Gingrich. (link) It’s too circular to be of explanatory value.
Moreover, they have announced a shift in momentum in this GOP race so often now that the term has become essentially meaningless - if it really is momentum, then it should not be able to change so easily. The fact that it does means that there is not really such a thing as ‘voter momentum’ to begin with.
It was a joke, dude.
And Marley is right about Michigan not being his home state. I’m sure you got a blast of that but it was more stupid media expectations. Romney is from Massachusetts. The connection with Michigan is old and bogus. It made for good soundbites but no matter how many times you heard it for the past couple of weeks, it made next to no difference in the total vote. It’s a non-issue.
If people are talking about momentum being tied to voters, then they’re wrong. Momentum is tied to donations, the eagerness of volunteers to put in more effort, and the way the media talks about a candidate. Those are real effects.
Nice to see a fellow political scientist here, though.
I’m a middle schooler too I guess because this headline from Alabama made me howl. No way was that not done on purpose. 
The more the better (well, within limits, of course).
This
…speaking as one of the aforementioned ‘people’. 
I’m not very political, but is it just me, or are these candidates some of the most polarizing, bizarre and disturbingly surreal guys to ever ooze out of the woodwork in the Republican primaries ever?
I can only imagine Dems/Independents cross-voting to give Santorum (Gawd, that name!), the perceived weaker candidate a boost in MI. Either way, it’s hard to imagine any of the candidates overtaking Obama in the general election at this point, especially since Huntsman dropped out.
Romney keeps drifting more and more to the right. As he tries to prove he is a severe conservative, he starts to take somewhat ridiculous positions to narrow the gap between him and crazy people while Newt Gingrich is fucking laughing his ass off.
Why is Gingrich laughing? He finished third in Arizona and fourth in Michigan.
Just wait . . . He’s lulling his opponents into a false sense of complacency by letting them kick his ass . . .
Delegates being split right down the middle.
OK, its Santorum, so yuck-o-rama! But still, the guy without bucks taking it to the guy with a buttload? Groovy.
As a Native Michigander/Michiganian, I did not vote for any of these whackdoodles.
TYVM.
All the election maps of Michigan that I’m seeing just show county results. Delegates in Michigan are awarded by congressional district, am I correct?
I’d like to see a map of results by congressional district. If the winner of the popular vote gets two extra delegates (and, am I right about that?), and if they are tied with delegates now at the final count, then that means that before Romney got his two delegates for winning the popular vote that Santorum was actually ahead of him by two when counting delegates awarded by congressional district. Am I right about all this?