nm. I can’t figure out how to read that frickin’ chart.
Gah.
The chart on the sixth page? You read by row. I mean, you could read by column, but that would tell you, for instance, that Ron Paul is the 2nd choice of 8% of Bachman supporters, 20% of Gingrich supporters, and so on.
That was what I was saying about the election cycle having been in a virtual state - it was all meaningless until the primaries start. People can cheer for their dream candidates without consequence. But once the delegates start getting committed, it’s time for wake up and face reality. This is when people start acknowledging the difference between what they’d like to have happen and what they think is possible.
I think it would be wise to observe the little formality of seeing how people in a southern primary actually vote before I drew any conclusions.
Crap. The correct table is on page 17. Sorry. Second choices of Ron Paul supporters, conveniently sorted.
Not sure 0.34
Bachman 0.19
Perry 0.14
Romney 0.13
Huntsman 0.1
Gingrich 0.05
Johnson 0.02
Santorum 0.02
Ookay then. Lots of not sures, though not as many as before. Bachman does surprisingly well. Given the samples Bachman, Perry, Romney and maybe Huntsman are in a 3 way tie. Gingrich trails, but remember this was at the peak of the advertising attacks.
Johnson is in the error zone, as is Santorum and Gingrich for that matter.
Big picture: there’s no evidence that Huntsman is particularly appealing to Ron Paul supporters, Bachman+Santorum leads the list, and some of Ron Paul’s support would probably go to Romney anyway.
ETA: Compare RPaul to the base and they don’t like Santorum or Gingrich and are more likely to be unsure.
The idea of Santorum supporters switching over to Ron Paul is probably the strangest idea I’ve ever heard. I mean, perhaps you can see a correlating fall and rise, but the idea is so strange that I would sooner believe that Santorum supporters switched to another candidate while supporters of another candidate gravitated towards Ron Paul in equal numbers.
Also, concerning the second choice of Paul supporters: It’s Johnson. The reason the polls say otherwise is because many, many polls do not list Johnson as an option to pick as a second choice. Hell, the poll Paul’s own campaign conducts doesn’t even list Johnson! Once you put Johnson at the top of that list, the second choice list looks reasonably accurate. However, there’s still one big caveat: a lot of Paul supporters would sooner write in Paul’s name than choose another Republican candidate.
Johnson is no longer a GOP primary candidate. He left to pursue a libertarian party nomination.
(I never understood why Johnson never caught on. He’s like Ron Paul without the racism, and with an actual record of accomplishment and executive experience. But Paul gets a cult following while Johnson could’ve bitten the head off a bat during the debates and still been ignored).
Name recognition. Ron Paul is the Starbucks of allegedly libertarian candidates. And he’s been at it a long, long time.
Too late! 
Maybe the reverse will be true. All 3 of Huntsman’s supporters will shift to Paul!
Santorum voters were about as likely to have Ron Paul as a 2nd choice as those of any other candidate, based on page 17 of my .pdf. Perhaps you don’t quite get that most voters are pretty muddle headed – about as muddle headed as I am on the topic of automotive repair for example. Arguably, individual voters have their priorities straight on average: it’s the political junkies who are obsessive. So plenty of voters will vacillate between Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.
FTR: No it’s not. Or rather, that may be the case for the most ardent of Ron Paul supporters (maybe 2% of the electorate) but not for the typical Ron Paul primary voter (at least in Iowa, in December). See my last post based on p. 17 of the .pdf.
No. The PPP poll contained that choice.
That still implies that who the “dream candidate” is, is shifting with alarming speed.
As Santorum has noted, Ron Paul is certainly in Mitt Romney’s camp. During the 20 debates, Ron Paul never attacked the frontrunner. Not even once. He attacked Gingrich 8 times. He attacked Santorum a whopping 22 times. Ron Perry and Herman Cain each received the Ron Paul stomp four times. As Santorum complained, “Their commercials look a lot alike and so do their attacks.”
Maybe Ron Paul simply doesn’t have as much of a problem with Romneycare as most libertarians do. Or maybe he thinks he can gain something by being Romney’s shill. He certainly hasn’t lost any supporters over this.
He has put out several ads that attack Romney. Romneys flaws are known. There are candidates posturing as the conservative alternative and the Paul campaign’s strategy is to become he conservative alternative. That has been clearly stated by the campaign since the outset. Why draw the attention from the person with the money?
Anyone who has watched Paul’s interviews could tell you that he lumps every other candidate in with the “status quo”. All this speculation is ill-informed soap-opera bs. Paul’s main issues are cutting spending, changing foreign policy, and changing monetary policy.
I suspect Paul knows that he isn’t going to drag in many current Romney supporters, but has a better chance with those of Santorum. But there may not be much overlap between his supporters and anyone else.
Permit me to focus on this substantive claim. Cite?
Googling I found the following links to Ron Paul attack ads, which I did not view.
Here he attacks Rick Santorum:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/new-ron-paul-tv-ad-compares-rick-santorum
http://race42012.com/2012/02/21/ron-paul-michigan-tv-ad-rick-santorum-a-conservative/
Here he attacks Rick Perry:
http://theiowarepublican.com/2011/ron-paul’s-reagan-revisionism/
Here he attacks Newt Gingrich:
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/07/ron-paul-ad-bashing-newt-gingrichs-record-airs-on-iowa-tv-today/
And here’s a roundup of Ron Paul ads, which might be helpful if WillFarnaby has trouble refreshing his memory:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF30EC3A2C6141FE8
I have a link to a poll which shows 2nd choices for candidates. Among Ron Paul supporters, the 2 most popular 2nd choices are Gingrich and Romney. So in that light, the media ceasefire is a little odd from Ron Paul’s perspective.
Not clear: check out this 2nd choice poll from Florida:
Personally, I suspect that Ron Paul considers libertarianism to be his family business. Shilling for Romney can only help Rand over the long run. This also explains his courting of the bigoted conservatives back in the 1990s and his purchase of the holocaust denial mailing list: it’s good business. As for Romney, this is like manna from heaven: he collects the benefits of Ron Paul’s attacks, without any association with the man’s wackiness. And the supporters of neither camp mind. So it’s a triple win. Of course it would be better for the country if the Republican primary wasn’t in the words of David Brooks, “a series of heresy trials in which each of the candidates accuse the others of tribal impurity”, as opposed to a serious discussion of the problems facing America. But that’s for another thread.
Mmmmm. Brooke Shields.
C’mere, baby.
Wait, what were we talking about?
I don’t think it’s inconceivable that Paul finds Romney the least objectionable of the remaining candidates, which could also be an issue. That wouldn’t make him a shill. Santorum is a Bush-era big government social conservative, and most of the Republican Party has decided they want to forget that period ever happened. (Much of the country seems to have decided to oblige them.) Gingrich is also a big government guy and an egomanic who switches course every time he has another brilliant idea. I realize that Romney is far from a small government type, but maybe Paul thinks Romney has been pushed into a corner where he will have to toe the party line on certain issues, and that’s good enough. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to attack Romney for fear of getting buried by his Super PAC.