Santorum’s numbers have been climbing, though it’s not surprising that he has little chance of actually winning. New Hampshire is the opposite of Iowa when it comes to strong Christian conservatives, and there’s no reason not to suspect a repeat of what happened to Huckabee here.
Fortunately, Rick knows this. Where he has a chance to shine is in South Carolina. Suggesting he is losing support in New Hampshire, where his current position is the strongest it has ever been there - is creating a false dialog.
Romney’s numbers have been fluctuating at the high 20’s, low 30’s for a while now. The most recent up-ticks, in the range of 1 or 2 points, have been for Huntsman (who is still stuck in the low teens), Paul, and Gingrich. Barring a catastrophic change, I still expect Romney to carry it with Paul and Gingrich vying for 2nd place.
In other words, pretty much as predicted for a while now.
With the way the polls are going, including this PPP poll and Suffolk tracking, which have relatively similar numbers, I expect Romney to win, but with less than 35% of the vote, possibly as low as the upper 20’s, considering that the tracking shows the momentum is heavily against Romney. Momentum can sometimes make a 5-10 point difference between the polls and the actual results. Momentum has stalled for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, and Perry never had much momentum in New Hampshire to start. Gingrich doesn’t have much, but Huntsman is surging.
What we need to watch in these polls is less the numbers and more about momentum.
Given this, I’ll predict that the result will be:
Mitt Romney-30%
Jon Huntsman-22
Ron Paul-19
Newt Gingrich-15
Rick Santorum-10
Rick Perry-2
Other-2
Result: Momentum shifts to Huntsman and Gingrich into the South Carolina primary. Romney loses a chunk of his voters to Huntsman, who is basically Mitt Romney without some of the more egregious baggage. That will basically put Romney out of the running in South Carolina, where Perry will be given his final chance to eek out a miracle and will make or break Santorum (I suspect break). The favorite in SC will be Gingrich.
It’s basically all downhill for Ron Paul from here on out. The next time he will be even approaching 20% will be in the Nevada Caucuses next month, which he has a small shot at actually winning if Romney is falling and Huntsman splits the Mormon and RINO voting blocs there.