Friday, February 17, 2012

Where Are We?

Nate Silver points out what you probably were already sensing:
Mr. Santorum’s bounce has already had considerably more staying power than those of some of his rivals. Newt Gingrich’s surge in the national polls, for instance, peaked just 24 or 48 hours after his victory in South Carolina, whereas Mr. Santorum’s has now persisted for more than a week.
Mitt Romney may really be in some trouble this time. His inability to connect just seems to be getting worse and worse.



Nationally, Romney appears to have lost his lead to Santorum:


Rick Santorum, the guy who lost his re-election bid in Pennsylvania by almost 20 points, is beating Mitt Romney.

The numbers at the state level are not good for Romney. He's losing in Michigan. He's losing really, really badly in Ohio, by 18 points according to Rasmussen. He's not only losing badly to Gingrich in Georgia but Santorum is about tied with him for second there so Gingrich + Santorum in Georgia is truly horrific for him. Romney is not up by much in Arizona. Rasmussen has a new poll out there that has him ahead by just 8 and PPP is polling the state now. My guess is they will show a smaller lead for Romney by the end of the weekend.

Meanwhile, various polls have Obama moving ahead of Romney in trial heats nationally. CNN has Obama over 50% and ahead by 5. Democracy Corps has Obama ahead by 4.


The question right now is simply whether things are just bad for Romney or bad for Romney with a chance of rain.

3 comments:

William D. Adler said...

Craziness. What do you think the chances are that, if Santorum wins Michigan, the party bigwigs try to force a new candidate into the race? I've heard rumors...

Larry Becker said...

It would take more than losing Michigan I think. But not too much more.

Daniels is the man in that scenario.

Jonathan Keller said...

Very unlikely, says Karl Rove, though not impossible. Delegate math, filing deadlines and the calendar work against that scenario:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203960804577239234050721086.html?KEYWORDS=KARL+ROVE