As of today, Rick Santorum officially has no more delegates than he had yesterday. That said, as CNN is just now this moment calling Colorado for Santorum in a stunning upset, his clean sweep of the states who voted/caucused today is a stunning rebuke to both Romney’s purported march through February and Newt Gingrich’s position as the favored not-Romney candidate. Santorum’s performance was impressive in each state, vastly outperforming his position in the polls, which had him losing by 9 points in Colorado (he won by 5) and winning by only 9 in Minnesota (he won by 18). It is hard to tell who got clobbered worse – Romney, who fell all the way to third in Minnesota, or Gingrich, who finished well behind the flailing Romney in every state. Newt Gingrich didn’t even bother to give a speech tonight, which was probably a good idea if Romney’s shell-shocked and confused concession was any indication of what we could have expected. Although Santorum didn’t get any official delegates tonight, he certainly has bought himself one heck of a news cycle, and has in one day sucked the oxygen out of virtually every other campaign with the stunning results tonight. For about the 9th or 10th time during this news cycle, the race has fundamentally changed its structure. For the first time I can recall, we are less than a month away from Super Tuesday and no one has any idea what is going to happen. Right now the question becomes whether Rick Santorum can get himself the money and organization to make this last beyond this week and into expensive contests in the larger states. One thing is for sure – this thing is a long way from over.
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Santorum Sweeps
[Posted by Karl] That’s the verdict from the normally easygoing Ed Morrissey . While I agree with his biggest criticism of the poll, it is still possible to get something out of it. I agree with Ed that the recent tactic of not disclosing the party breakdown of the sample is simply absurd. In an era where trust in institutions — including journalism — is low and demands for increased transparency are on the rise everywhere, hiding this basic information from public view invites skepticism and ridicule. The WaPo, ABC News, and Gary Langer ought to be embarrassed. However, Ed also complains that it’s “a poll of general population adults rather than registered or likely voters, so it’s not even a proper polling type for the predictive outcome they claim.” The poll does in fact provide head-to-head results for both adults and registered voters; the WaPo noted both results for each in its accompanying coverage: In a general-election test, Obama leads Romney 52 to 43 percent among all Americans; more narrowly, 51 to 45 percent, among registered voters. Among all adults, it’s Obama’s first time topping 50 percent in a head-to-head matchup with Romney since July; it’s his first time ever above that point among registered voters. (Ed has updated his post to reflect this, while noting that other hyped aspects of the story do not give the RV numbers, which is certainly a fair critique.) The history of this poll, and comparison to other polls, can tell us a bit about what is going on in this particular poll, even without the party breakdown of the sample. Ed correctly notes that the sample in this poll tends to produce Dem-friendly results, which is probably why the recent decision to omit data about the sample really set him off. However, I would add that the dynamic producing those results has been that this poll historically tends to undersample both parties (and disproportionately undersample Republicans). The corollary, which (afaik) Ed has not stressed, is that the result inflates the sample of Independents. Accordingly, this nugget from the WaPo coverage is doubly notable: Obama’s momentum since mid-January has evened the score with Romney among political independents. Among independent voters in the last Post-ABC poll, Romney held a 12-point edge; now these voters split 48 percent for Obama, 47 percent for Romney. First, this reportage tells you that the poll is still collecting the party data but not reporting it in the released results. Second, when you compare this poll’s results to other recent polls (1/12 – 2/5), the Obama +6 result is not particularly out of line. Indeed, the topline results here merely add 2 or 3 points to each side of the Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted at roughly the same time, which is margin of error type stuff. And it’s not all that different from the mid-January PPP poll which showed a more pronounced Obama surge with independents. This poll’s similar gap with higher numbers suggests this poll’s sample probably includes more Republicans and possibly more Democrats (as the PPP poll did) at the expense of the now supposedly more Obama-friendly Indies. What accounts for the supposed Obama surge with Indies? One possibility the WaPo coverage raises is the State of the Union speech, which fell within this poll’s window. However, that would not account for the surge in the PPP poll. A more plausible explanation is the modest uptick in the economy (and it’s overhype in the establishment media). This poll has Obama improving a few points not only in overall job approval, but approval on how he’s handling the economy. However, even this poll has his job approval with Indies underwater , so presumably his approval on the economy does not look great with Indies. Accordingly, the underlying dynamic in this poll is probably similar to that seen in the PPP poll: it’s not about Obama as much as it is about Romney. Q25 in this poll shows 52% say that the more they hear about Romney, the less they like him, which is not as bad as Newt Gingrich’s 60%, but still bad. This is a function of the campaign and its media coverage. Technically, Romney gets marginally better coverage than Obama … but Romney is getting more coverage than Obama . Thus, people are hearing more negative coverage of Romney than Obama. Obviously, the balance will shift once the GOP nominee is effectively known. And this is one reason why head-to-head polling is basically meaningless at this point in the cycle . So it’s a bit ironic that the head-to-head is where the WaPo/ABC poll chose to report the results for registered voters. — Update : I wasn’t even going to mention this, but Dem pollster Margie Omero does at the HuffPo: Today the Washington Post/ABC News released a survey showing Obama over majority support among registered voters (51% Obama, 45% Romney). But as Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse (a partner in the firm Public Opinion Strategies) pointed out in a blast email, the poll asked about a few of Romney potential liabilities just prior to the vote question. This goes against polling best practices, and it’s possible the survey shows elevated Obama numbers as a result. Omero also notes that Obama’s liabilities were not questioned before concluding that the underlying issue is Romney’s likability. Again, if Romney is the nominee, that is likely to shift. But Omero highlights that the problem with the poll mirrors the dynamic in the media coverage. –Karl
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Is the WaPo/ABC News poll “worthless”?
FORT MYERS, Fla. — George Soros, Goldman Sachs, and other forces of the “establishment” are conspiring to support Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich warned Republicans here Monday, as Floridians prepared to go to the polls in their state’s crucial GOP primary. Referring to an interview that Soros — a billionaire notorious for his funding of left-wing causes — gave to Reuters last week in Davos, Switzerland, Gingrich summarized Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” The anti-Gingrich cabal, said the former House Speaker, also includes investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, which backed President Obama four years ago and now — having profited from taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts — is bankrolling Romney’s campaign attack ads. “Those ads are your money recycled to attack me,” Gingrich told the hundreds gathered outside Page Field airport here. He cited no evidence that Goldman Sachs was in cahoots with Romney, and the opacity of the “super PACs” which are pumping millions into this Republican primary campaign makes it impossible either to prove or disprove Gingrich’s depiction of the malevolent forces arrayed against him. Yet he repeated similar accusations in different forums throughout the day — on ABC in the morning, on Fox News in the afternoon, and at each of the five stops on his final whirlwind tour of the Sunshine State — as if endeavoring to convince his supporters that they are victims of a vast conspiracy. Newt seemed to be providing a pre-emptive excuse for what polls indicate will be a decisive defeat for him in Tuesday’s winner-take-all primary. Six polls within the past week have shown Gingrich trailing Romney by double-digit margins in Florida — the Real Clear Politics average of Florida polls had Romney’s margin at 12.5 points Monday — a striking reversal of Gingrich’s advantage after he beat Romney handily in South Carolina ten days ago. (See ” The End of Inevitability,” Jan. 22.) The rival campaigns suddenly seem to have switched roles. Gingrich’s Carolina win was enough to inspire panic among Romney’s supporters, with Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post warning that if Newt got the nomination he would “alienate virtually all independent voters, lose more than 40 states and put the House majority in jeopardy.” But as evidence mounted that Romney’s aggressive full-court Florida attack was succeeding — and after Gingrich fared poorly in two televised debates last week — it was Newt and his supporters who pushed the panic button, asserting that unless conservatives immediately rallied behind Gingrich, the “Establishment” would conspire to deliver the GOP nomination to Romney. Among those who have helped spread that message is former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week issued a Facebook warning that ” the GOP establishment [is] trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots ” and ” using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.” Palin yesterday reiterated that charge during an appearance on Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business Network program, saying that “those inside the machine” are ganging up against Gingrich. For the first time during this campaign, Palin expressed a dismissive attitude toward another Republican challenger, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, telling Napolitano that the Republican choice is “one or the other” between Mitt and Newt, adding that it is “naively idealistic” to think either Santorum or Texas Rep. Ron Paul could mount a serious challenge to Romney. Because the Florida primary awards delegates on a winner-take-all basis, there is no benefit to candidates who can’t contend for first place here. Paul skipped out of Florida after last Thursday’s debate, while Santorum was forced to cut short his campaign in the Sunshine State because of his 3-year-old daughter’s weekend illness. Both candidates, however, have vowed to continue the fight in upcoming caucuses and primaries. Santorum picked up the endorsement of influential conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin Monday and, in an appearance in Missouri (which holds a non-binding primary vote next week), vowed to avoid “gutter politics” in his campaign. When the votes are counted tonight in Florida, Santorum will be watching the results with his supporters in Nevada, where Saturday’s caucuses will be the next contest on the GOP campaign calendar. Meanwhile in Florida, the man who looks to be the loser in this winner-take-all primary was pushing an angry populist message yesterday to the supporters who gathered at the airport in Fort Myers. Gingrich warned that the Obama administration was attempting to impose a “dictatorship of anti-religious secularism,” he promised to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and he denounced Romney as having “no clue what Reagan stood for.” (One Romney ad cites Gingrich’s long-ago criticisms of President Reagan, which Gingrich sought to refute by bringing the Gipper’s son, conservative talk-show host Michael Reagan, to campaign for him in Florida.) Gingrich welcomed the endorsement of Herman Cain — whose Tea Party-backed campaign was derailed by allegations of sexual misconduct — saying that the Atlanta businessman’s support would “send a signal that this is a grassroots populist conservatism versus the establishment.” The crowd enthusiastically cheered. “We’re in a very simple campaign,” Gingrich said. “We are pitting people power against money power. No question — you look at the list of top ten donors to Mitt Romney, that’s money power. That is the establishment. Those are the people who would be happy, as George Soros said, with either Obama or Romney, and they do not want a conservative. Those are the people who have led the assault on me over the last couple of weeks, by all sorts of folks whose number-one goal is to keep power in Washington the way it is now.” Gingrich then alluded to New York — that is to say, the Wall Street financiers who he alleges have bankrolled Romney’s campaign against him — as having perpetrated a fraud that he promised to expose. “I want you to know, I do not believe it is legitimate for the current establishment to preside over the decay as long as they’re doing well. I think we have an obligation to our children, to our grandchildren, to fundamentally change Washington and, frankly, to fundamentally change New York. We deserve to know the truth about the last four years. We deserve to know what happened to our money.” The afternoon sun was shining brightly and, behind Gingrich, palm trees were swaying in the warm breeze, but he seemed to see no irony in issuing this dark and chilly warning against the menace of “money power” to a Republican audience in the Sunshine State.
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Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State
TAMPA — This week Florida has been sunny, as usual. The Republican presidential nomination race has not. But by tomorrow Floridians can safely answer their phones again, sure in the knowledge that the caller won’t be Mitt saying what a low-life Washington Insider lobbyist Newt is, or Newt calling to say what an anti-immigrant, job destroying robber-baron Mitt is. Floridians can also watch television again without seeing endless Democratic talking points masquerading as Republican ads. Almost all of the telephone interruptions are robo-calls. So it does the person who has just gotten up from dinner to take one no good to say into the phone: “That may be true, Sunshine. But you should hear what he just said about you.” The Gingrich and Romney ads carry more charges against each other than it’s possible for people who have lives to keep track of, let alone intelligently evaluate. Some of the charges are legitimate. One of these being why did Newt Gingrich loot Freddie Mac instead of working for its elimination? Others not so serious, or just false. Gingrich did not resign from Congress “in disgrace.” Romney is not “anti-immigrant” (though Democrats will be happy to repeat this charge if Romney is the nominee). Nor is he a Massachusetts liberal. In the accusation derby here, Romney may have the advantage because he has outspent Gingrich by almost three to one. Some of the charges have been downright trifling. Gingrich has even gigged Romney for hiring staffers who formerly worked for Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida who went from RINO to independent while losing by 20 points to Marco Rubio in the 2010 U.S. Senate race and is expected to run for future offices as a Democrat. Of course Gingrich deserves any ridicule he gets for suggesting the Moon as the 51st
If the polls are right and the Sunshine State delivers the former Massachusetts governor a decisive win, his breadth of support could prove more telling than the margin of victory. Originally posted here: Romney’s Florida Lead Cuts Across Categories
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Romney’s Florida Lead Cuts Across Categories
