Posted on 02/17/2012 9:01:11 PM PST by Steelfish
February 17, 2012 Santorum’s Surge Holds Steady So Far By NATE SILVER Ten days after Rick Santorum’s surprisingly strong wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses, there is no sign yet that his surge in the polls is abating.
In the Gallup national tracking poll, for instance, Mr. Santorum’s position has continued to improve slightly, while other national polls suggest that Mr. Santorum’s position is holding steady at worst.
Interpretation is rendered more difficult, however, by the fact that methodological differences among the polls seem to be producing different results. Traditional telephone polls using live interviewers have tended to show an essentially even race or Mr. Santorum with a small lead. But polls conducted using automated scripts have shown Mr. Santorum with a fairly clear advantage by margins ranging from 10 to 15 points.
The differences may reflect the fact that automated polls normally have lower response rates, and therefore can tilt toward the candidate with the most enthusiastic supporters. Evidence suggests that Mr. Santorum’s supporters are more enthusiastic than Mr. Romney’s.
In an ideal world, pollsters should be trying to reach a random sample of voters. To the extent that enthusiasm provides a tangible advantage to a candidate by making his supporters more likely to turn out, pollsters can then account for that by applying a likely voter model.
Nevertheless, enthusiasm can provide a tangible advantage to a candidate in primaries and caucuses, where turnout is generally low. Mr. Santorum has overperformed his polls in most of the early-voting states so far.
There is certainly the chance that Mr. Romney can overcome his deficit with Mr. Santorum in states like Michigan and Ohio as his advertising resources take hold.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Well I think most of us have gone through some form of the following calculation:
Most of us see Romney as RINO, moderate, liberal, and/or the devil incarnate.
Ron Paul’s libertarian ideas are interesting until he becomes a fruit loop on foreign policy that would get us all killed.
Bachmann and Perry never were ready for prime time, and the MSM and party smear machine denied us the opportunity to vote for someone completely unique like Herman Cain.
So that leaves us with the choice of Santorum or Gingrich. If you set debate and rhetorical capability aside for a moment and assess the comparative weaknesses of each man and the number of things in their past record that they have to apologize for or try to explain away, Santorum comes out on top. Factor the debate skills and persona back in, and it gets a lot closer. Neither candidate is perfect but neither is fatally flawed, and both have pros and cons vs one another.
And that’s where we are. If the Santorum Surge continues to hold, it will tell us which factors have held the greater influence.
Santorum may turn out to be the accidental president in all of this. I don’t think he was the first choice of many but he hung around and now seems to be the “compromise candidate” for a lot of folks who just don’t want to see Romney on the ticket.
I know I won’t like everything he says or does but he’s a far sight better than any of the other three, including Newt who had his chance to steal the limelight and then blew it just like Cain, Bachmann and Perry did. Only Newt’s bloated ego won’t admit it the way Perry did.
Santorum may turn out to be as unelectable as Newt is (60% negatives in national polls) but he’s not yet and has the chance to define himself where as Newt has already been defined to most of America.
IMO, Santorum is the only chance we have left to keep Romney off the ticket. If Santorum wins Michigan and Arizona, the dollars to fund his campaign will follow and he won’t have to run the election on a shoestring.
I find it so funny how the media been trying to shoot at any gop candidate that they think is ahead. For a while it was Bachman, Cain, Perry, Romney, Newt, then Sanctorum
Funny, I don’t recall them shooting at Romney...
I wouldn’t get too harsh about supporters of Speaker Newt Gingrich.
From fox News:
Firebrand Free Republic Founder Endorses Newt Gingrich With Epic Call to Action
I’m officially endorsing Newt Gingrich for President today
Jan 19, 2012 | Jim Robinson, Free Republic
I’m officially endorsing Newt Gingrich for president today. Was going to wait until after Florida, but see no reason to delay. We need Newt to win in South Carolina and Florida to stop any possible momentum building up for the establishment big government, statist, abortionist RINO!!
RomneyCare = ObamaCare = government tyranny!! Taxpayer funded abortion is as evil as evil can be!!
Newt is a pro-life Reagan Revolution conservative who led the Republican Revolution of the 90’s, taking the majority away from the democrats who had held it for 40 years. And as Speaker, cut the taxes, cut the government, cut the spending, cut the deficit, cut regulations, cut unemployment, brought the federal budget under control for four years running. And unlike Romney, actually blocked a socialist healthcare system from becoming law. And created a pro-growth, pro-free market, pro-jobs environment and extended the Reagan economy throughout the 90’s!! Newt is the ideal candidate to lead the Tea Party Revolution!!
I loved last night, “Michigan will determine the race” coming out of all of the talking head’s mouths in synch. They must think their guy has a shot in Michigan.
ABR. Amen.
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