Posted on 02/25/2012 6:31:47 PM PST by JediJones
It’s not a two-man race. That’s Romney/Santorum/RINO media spin. The primary is as wide open a race as it’s ever been. A Romney win in MI absolutely does NOT mean it’s all over. I’m surprised any one but a Romneybot would make such a ridiculous claim. Only 2 of the 25 most conservative states as ranked by Gallup have voted yet. Those states could end up looking a lot more like Georgia, with Romney placing in 3rd behind Newt and Rick.
Women are far more liberal/moderate on all political issues than men, and as we’re discovering in this primary, that includes Republican women. If you think you need the women vote to win the general election, then you need a liberal/moderate like Romney.
As far as I know, the Republican president rarely wins the women vote anymore even when they do win the election. Conservatives are fighting against the gender gap. But our strategy has always been to increase turnout and the margin of victory among the groups we’re strong in to counter that.
Bottom line is looking at polling now to determine what the polls will show in 9 months is pointless. Why don’t you pull up polls from 9 months ago, May 2011, and tell us if they represent how people are going to vote this month?
“What was the dynamic that helped Santorum win Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri?
Answer is, he performed well in the most recent debate before those contests, even though it happened a couple weeks before, and his two opponents Newt and Mitt were training fire on each other, leaving Santorum unscathed.”
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As you get further down the road, the situation begins to harden, along with the numbers. I don’t know why Newt fell so precipitously after South Carolina. We could speculate on that. But he DID fall and he has not risen again, nor will he rise in these two upcoming primaries where he will finish in single digits in all likelihood.
Newt has no likely, plausible path back to contention. The longer he goes without a victory, indeed without even a good showing, the less likely he can make a case that he should be nominated to the dwindling pool of remaining voters. That is just the truth of the matter.
“Women are far more liberal/moderate on all political issues than men...” True, but it is the vast Grand Canyon-type gap that is at issue here. No candidate with such a vast gap in gender among primary voters has ever gone onto win a Presidential election. If Santorum can come close to narrowing the gender gap, he wins in MI and possibly in AZ, and he’ll beat Obama by the same logic.
Santorum is on track to lose Az and MI. After the last debate and Romney’s carpet bombing in MI , Santorum is behind Romney in both states now. The only reason Santorum surged is because he started to look like a winner , as the man who can beat Romney after Newt lost Fl. Nobody really looked at Santorum’s Senate record until they got pieces of it in the debate. People found out Santorum isn’t very conservative except on social issues. Meanwhile Newt has been getting good press , staying on message and on the attack on Obama. The race moves south on ST. In the south , they vote for the southern conservative. Not the one from PA or MA. The south voted for Huck over McCain in 08. Newt has spent a lot of time in CA and OH and GA , WA , ect while Romney and Santorum have been slinging the mud in MI. I would say Newt is in good position to make a come back on ST and campete in TX and CA afterward.
If he doesn’t win the nomination I hope he has a fall back plan because there will never be a Santorum administration. If Santorum is the candidate the GOP loses in Goldwater fashion. Rick’s holier than thou sanctimonious attitude about moral issues plays well on FR and in the GOP primaries with the base. They go nowhere with the general public and would result in a mandate level election for O’Bama and the end of America as we know it. So all you Santorum followers enjoy your day in the sun. This is as good as it gets for Rick.
Welcome aboard. You described my political journey to a "T".
I don’t know if can regain it, I hope so, but I am curious as to how exactly he lost it.
I don’t think it was R0mney attcks adds in any particular state, because he seems down in every state since SC. So I am wondering was it something he said or did? It’s hard to figure out as he is certainly articulate.
Hope so. The longer the primary, the more conservative will be the candidate. Even Romney.No way he can back track, move “to the center,” Of course, can anything make him a “Passionate Republican?” as contrasted with a “COMpassionate one? Can a wooden indian be brought to life?
There are a lot of things wrong with your argument, not the least of which are the words “likely” and “plausible.” Every professional analyst of this race has thrown out use of those kind of words ever since a different candidate unprecedentedly won each of IA, NH and SC. And that was even before the most “unlikely” and “implausible” event of all, Santorum performing his hat trick in February.
Likewise, none of the polls show that the situation or numbers have “hardened.” They have swung wildly up and down, now landing on Santorum. He is going through his first full vetting and attack ad phase, which we know has radically changed momentum in this race every time it happens to a candidate. Each state has consistently shown absolutely no interest in voting the way that the last state did. I am not sure we will EVER have a genuine frontrunner in this race. I predict that no candidate will make it to the convention with a majority of delegates (I think that was determined the minute that the first 3 states all split the decision).
My prediction is that the unpredictable event happens, where Newt proves he wins the free media war against the other candidates even with debates removed from the equation. However, Romney’s attack ads remain a powerful force and the only thing that keeps him a viable player in the race. The good thing is with Newt and Rick both in the race, Romney’s attack strategy may only shift votes between those two guys, and never help him. Neither of them should drop out until at least April.
Can you paste the statistics that you're referencing? I don't even understand what you're saying. No Republican primary candidate who had a gender gap bigger than another Republican primary candidate's gender gap went on to win a general election? So you're saying they did win the primary though? Be honest, you just pulled that made-up stat out of your hind quarters.
There's also no way to say that because Santorum wins MI that he will beat Obama. That's just one heck of a huge leap that you cannot justify making, in part because no one can predict how the general election will turn out, because it's 9 MONTHS AWAY. We still haven't even figured out how the elections 3 DAYS AWAY from now will turn out!
I would not look at polls or primary results at all to predict November. I would look at the overall qualities of the candidate and compare them to past candidates who've won or lost on a much more subjective level, because that is all that can work at this stage. At this stage the educated mind of one analyst is going to mean far more than the polls of 1,000 people's mushy minds who aren't paying attention to politics much at all. You're free to make your case why Santorum would win in the general election on that basis, but I won't care about what the polling data says on that front until after the conventions and at least one presidential debate.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince the Santo-bots of anything here, just trying to air out the stinky funk in the spin room for the benefit of the rest of the viewing audience.
Before impugning integrity, why the heck don’t you check Gallup and the slew of articles and commentaries on Gingrich’s unbridgeable gender gap?
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/gingrich-destroyed-by-gender-gap/
Bush beat Gore and Kerry with 10-12 points gender gap.
http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/research/topics/documents/GenderGapAdvisory04.pdf
A 25-point gender gap in FL and now a 39-point gender gap in the recent Gallup is of historic proportions and this puts Gingrich completely and irrevocably out of contention regardless of what happens on Tuesday.
Chris, I think we don’t understand it because we weren’t in Iowa or Florida. When I see people from those states or the media analysts who spend time there describing the volume of attack ads, they cannot find the words to express the magnitude and horror of them.
The key though, is that the voters in the subsequent states seem to inevitably view that candidate as damaged goods after they lose the state. I think for people who are paying very little attention to politics, they inevitably get a “good” feeling about winners and a “bad” feeling about losers. They assume that those people in the previous state made a logical decision and they trust their judgment.
The problem in this primary is the Not-Romney effect. Romney has consistently been deemed unacceptable by a majority of voters. So they will not gravitate to him based on momentum alone. Although one would have to say he’s VERY SLOWLY building support. Romney has definitely reached higher national highs this year compared to last, and his “floor” has risen from 20 points to 25 points. He’s always had by far the largest solid base of any candidate and nothing that’s been done to him has chipped away one bit at it.
What the Not-Romney means is that we have entered into a cycle of Romney winning a state or two, conservatives panicking and delivering a HUGE win to whichever conservative they like best that week, Romney desperately attacking that candidate and destroying them in the next state, conservatives panicking again and switching to ANOTHER conservative candidate to try and beat Romney with a new weapon, and Romney attacking again...
Which means what might happen on Tuesday is Santorum getting destroyed by Romney, and conservatives again looking elsewhere for the man to take on Romney. That is why Newt could rise again on Super Tuesday. My fear is though without any punches having been landed on Romney lately, by Santorum missing the mark and Newt going “nice” again, that he will keep slowly building that core base of support for himself. Since he’s already ahead in votes and delegates, that makes him the likely primary winner. But the other dynamic is the imbalance in type of states that have voted...most of the states so far have been in the bottom 25 by conservative rank, with only a couple in the top 25. Romney may build his standing but it still might not be enough to pull off wins in those mostly Southern states.
I will also add that solely focusing on the Florida results as in Dick Morris' article is just silly. Newt WON the women's vote in South Carolina as I recall. So you're taking a vote that occurred on one day in one state. It hardly defines the character of the entire race or what the general election will look like.
There has been a gender gap in every presidential election since 1980. In the 2000 election, women were 10 percentage points less likely than men to vote for George W. Bush (43% of women vs. 53% of men supported Bush); and 12 percentage points more likely than men to vote for Al Gore (54% of women vs. 42% of men supported Gore), according to the Voter News Service.
I was referring to the latest ARG poll (misspoke by calling it Gallup-apologies) posted on Feb 25, 2012
It’s not the difference in gender for those voting for Gingrich. You need to examine the gender divide between Gingrich and the other two viable candidates in the race.
http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/
No you don’t need to look at that. Your Bush/Gore document shows what the “gender gap” means. What you’re describing is an invalid comparison. Comparing where Newt’s polling with women vs. where Mitt’s polling with women isn’t the “gender gap.” The “gender gap” is the difference in how one candidate does with men vs. women. The other statistic is meaningless.
I don’t see any reference to a gender gap in the link you sent, so paste it in here if you see one.
For your information, the “gender gap” in Florida for Newt was 8 points, less than Bush in 2000. Newt won 36% of men and 28% of women. Romney’s gender gap was with men and it was 11 points, which probably shows you how little a single state election analysis is relevant to predicting the general election. Santorum had no gap, getting 13% from both genders.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012/florida-primary-jan-31/exit-polls
Funny, they’re discussing this on FOX right now, and say Santorum has an 8% gender gap in a CNN poll.
Of course by now I’m used to the anti-Newt folks having to make stuff up in order to make him look bad, even ridiculous stuff like a “39-point gender gap,” so I’ll try to avoid making a snarky comment about it.
“Santorum has an 8% gender gap in a CNN poll.” Yes, I heard that, and CNN is referring to the ARG poll where Romney leads Santorum by 8% among women and leads Gingrich by 39%. If Santorum can narrow that gap to 3%-4%, he wins MI.
No, that’s not what they were referring to. This was FOX referring to a CNN poll, not CNN referring to an ARG poll.
You still don’t understand the “gender gap” as everyone else in the world refers to it and how it’s always referred to in polling data. You don’t calculate it by comparing how two different candidates are doing with women. You calculate it by how ONE candidate is doing with the two genders.
You would think that Dick Morris who has run several political campaigns and is a political commentator on Fox would not what gender gap means. There could be more than one metric for measuring this.
I heard Susan Hendricks (BTW, the only reason why one may turn to CNN-LOL!) refer to the 8% Santorum gap on women relative to Romney’s lead.
No matter what metric you use, this is an insurmountable obstacle for Gingrich. It’s been written about over and over again.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/gingrichs-gender-gap/
I just now caught this... sorry I missed it, but thank you.
Dick Morris didn’t use the phrase “gender gap.” Find me one article that calculates the gender gap like you do, where you come up with that ridiculous 38-point spread or whatever you said. You’re giving me articles that refer to the gender gap and discuss it, but do not CALCULATE it the way you do.
You are again totally ignoring everything I’ve said and repeating your same mythical nonsense about an “insurmountable” gap. The article you just linked to discussed the SAME FL exit polls I linked to above where I showed the gender gap had Newt down by 8 POINTS with women but Romney had a WORSE gender gap where he’s down by 11 POINTS with men. AS I SAID BEFORE AND YOU IGNORED, this has virtually no relevance to a general election and little relevance to the upcoming primaries. This was a snapshot in time that was different in every way from the SC results a week before. And an 8 point gap with women is no different than how Bush did against Gore when he won.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT AND YOU DON’T WANT TO LEARN. Give up this thread because you are going NOWHERE and trying to take everyone else with you.
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