This thesis was put forth by both Shields and Brooks on the PBS NewsHour last night, and I think it makes a lot of sense. Romney isn’t getting a majority in any state, but between him and Paul, they are. And that leaves too few votes to be split between too many other candidates. And we all know that Ron Paul isn’t going to win (even he admits that).
Are they right or are they right? Baring the usual dead girl or live boy situation…
I’d just as soon you leave them covered, thank you.
Curious, though, why you single Paul out. If Paul dropped out of the race, where do you think his supporters would go? It seems pretty unlikely to me that many of them would go sucking up to Santorum or one of that crowd. Maybe they would, but so many of the Paul supporters I’ve known are libertarians, and they seem much likelier to go along with Romney than with any of the others.
This will never get old.
Huntsman.
I don’t think they’re right that Paul has let Romney win. Romney is winning because a)none of the other candidates has been plausible enough to consolidate the anti-Romney vote behind them and b) the other candidates decided to wait until December to start really going after Romney.
If Paul dropped out his die-hard supporters would just stay home, which wouldn’t effect Romney’s relative standing, and the people that don’t like Romney and figure Paul is a safe place to park a protest vote since he won’t win anyways would just fragment amongst the other candidates, leaving Romney still in the lead.
ETA: (also, I think it’d be fun to hear Brooks explain exactly what percentage of Paul’s vote is coming from his web ads.)
Unlikely. The folks who vote in primaries are the party faithful. The party faithful aren’t going to just stay home. Or do you have some evidence about Paul supporters that informs your assertion?
Not bad. But because Shields and Brooks don’t operate in a print environment, they will never have to revisit their prediction. (Yes I know they are columnists, but they didn’t print these forecasts, did they?)
Robust?
Let’s say Romney caps out at 30, leaving 45 for “Perry, Santorum, Gingrich, Huntsman, you name it”. Could one of them get 31? I think they could. From the NYT: Evangelicals, Seeking Unity, Back Santorum for Nomination. Santorum could win some states, Gingrich could win others. (Perry would drop out and frankly Huntsman drains the Romney vote.) This would send the nomination to the convention. Now I will admit that this scenario reflects a bias of mine: I just as soon see Republican contenders beat themselves with rubber mallets until June. Along these lines, Citizens United plus post-election reality TV contracts imply that party discipline is out the window. But the Republican elite will certainly want to wrap this thing up after Florida. And generally speaking, they get their way.
ETA: Is there a significant division within the elite? I’m guessing the answer is “No”, which implies that the evangelicals don’t really count.
I don’t think Paul is a factor. Here’s how I see it.
Up until very recently, the campaigns have all existed in a virtual state - nothing meant anything. But now that the primaries have started, it’s getting real.
If people really don’t want Romney to be the candidate and they see that division among his rivals is helping him, there will be some serious moves to consolidate support behind one person to topple Romney.
But I don’t think there is a real “Anyone But Romney” movement out there. Many people support other candidates but that’s because they want that particular candidate to be nominated - they’re pro-Paul or pro-Santorum or pro-Gingrich not anti-Romney. Most of them are willing to accept Romney as a second place choice if their first choice doesn’t make it. So they’re not going to abandon their candidate of choice just to help somebody else defeat Romney.
So I think Romney will get the nomination but it’ll be because he outlasts the other candidates. They’ll continue to drop out one by one and he’ll be the one left standing. When that happens, most of the other candidates’ supporters will fall into line and support Romney as being preferable to Obama.
Much of Paul’s support is independents or people that have registered Republican in closed primary states just to support him, not “party faithful”. See the Ramussen numbers quoted here for example.
Of course, some of those people would still show up and vote in the primary without Paul, but to the extent that he’s drawing in new voters rather then taking them from other candidates, his dropping out wouldn’t effect the relative standing of the other candidates.
How would that change the equation? Then it’d just be saying that Huntsman ensures a Ron Paul win. Given the degree to which Romney licked Santorum et al. in the first two contests, I think the only way it could make a difference would be if Paul’s votes went to one of the non-Romney vaguely-plausibles.
Screwed up link. should be here
So, duh.
Huntsman could win the nomination, and actually does want to be president. Paul can’t win and, as far as I can tell, isn’t really running for president. He’s running for “the cause”.
I have difficulty following how Paul’s support would gravitate largely to Hunstman, who is apparently not seen as a “real” conservative by many Republicans and is suspect for having associated with the evil Democrats. “Huntsman - Not As Crazy As The Rest” has not been a viable campaign slogan so far.
Ron Paul has arguably generated a lot of support that would not translate well to other candidates - he is so diametrically opposed to what at lot of them support (especially in foreign policy) that it’d be tough to convince a lot of his supporters that, say, Rick Perry or Santorum are good alternatives.
I can see many of them voting for him as a third party candidate, if it comes to that.
This is difficult to reconcile with the way we’ve seen the polls going: Romney has remained steadier than almost any other primary candidate in history, while all the rest of the candidates go through a cycle of surges in popularity. When the not-Romney voters are continually swinging from “We support Trump!” to “We support Bachmann!” to “We support Perry!” to “We support Cain!” to “We support Gingrich!” to “We support Santorum!”, but never actually move over into “We support Romney!”, it’s hard to conclude that they really do want anyone specific other than “not-Romney”.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that Paul will run against both Obama and Romney on a Libertarian ticket, thus giving the Republican party a dose of Ralph Nader-like fun.
PPP did an Iowa poll in mid December. They reported cross tabulations between the voter’s first choice and second choice. Ron Paul received 25% support at the time. Here are the 2nd choices of Ron Paul supporters:
Gary Johnson: 39%
Jon Huntsman: 32%
Michele Bachmann: 31%
Mitt Romney: 26%
Rick Perry: 24%
Gingrich: 10%
Santorum: 6%
Someone else/Not Sure: 48%
I know they don’t total to 100%: work out the math yourself. “Not sure” was extraordinarily high for Ron Paul: 48% didn’t know what they would do if he withdrew. Romney’s 2nd choice uncertains came in second place: 18%, while the remaining supporters had Not Sures of 10% or under. So methinks that if Ron Paul dropped out, things would be particularly fluid and Romney would have as decent a chance of capturing the Rondroids as anybody else.
Note that Ron Paul drew a fair amount of votes from Bachmann. Jon Huntsman scored high - 32%*52% = ~16% of Ron Paul supporters, but that’s hardly an overwhelming number.
Cite: click the PDF link at the bottom of the page: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/12/paul-leads-in-iowa.html
ETA: Recognize that the error margins above are pretty high. n=597, Ron Paul supporters ~150, Ron Paul supporter’s not sure: ~75. So Huntsman, Bachmann, Perry and Romney are essentially tied. Pool Santorum and Bachman and you get 37%, which is in Gary Johnson territory.
Even if Paul doesn’t run third party a large enough percentage of his supporters will vote for Johnson or someone else. Obama is almost guaranteed a win at this point. I’d like to see a Johnson- Nader ticket or something like it. That would be interesting.
I’m skeptical that those numbers are correct. It’s not that they don’t add up to 100% as if there was a rounding error, they add up to 216%. Makes no sense at all.
Yeah, if you look at the PDF in the link, it looks like Measure for Measure misinterpreted the table; in it, columns add up to 100% and rows do not. I gotta believe that this is the correct way to interpret that data:
Ron Paul supporters’ second choice:
Romney 33%
Perry 22%
Gingrich 20%
Santorum 10%
Bachmann 8%
Huntsman 3%
Johnson 3%
The 48%, then would mean that Ron Paul is being considered especially strongly by undecideds. As in, 48% of undecided votes are leaning toward Ron Paul as their choice. Or, were, in December, in a poll which didn’t do a particularly good job of predicting the results of the Iowa caucus.
That said, it’s a very confusing table, and I’m still not confident that I’m reading it correctly. It’s the second table of page 6, if anyone wants to take a stab at it.