This is not good news for Newt.
I have simulated 7 following counties so far and have Newt at 21.41%. He is flat.
Anderson
Richland
Charleston
Aiken
Abbeville
Allendale
Oconee
With Santorum at 16%, it seems that Perry is garnering more Evangelical support than I thought in the NW. This leads to suggest that those not supporting to Santorum are turning to Perry before going to Gingrich, which is not good.
Once again, Paul is also running higher. I had him in the 13-15%. His increase may bring down slightly Romney’s percentages in Columbia and Charleston.
Overall, Newt hasn’t gained and Santorum has lost ground to Perry. If Santorum (who I had at 21.71%) had lost ground to Newt, then Gingrich should have been up over 25%. The fact he isn’t leads me to believe Gingrich has issues in the NW part of the state and that Perry is taking more votes than I though.
What is Perry’s number? Rasmussen doesn’t even list Perry. Yet if you add the numbers up, there are 19% unaccounted for. I’m sure most are undecided, but Perry must be getting some support.
"Overall, Newt hasn’t gained and Santorum has lost ground to Perry."
Perry is at 5-6% in every poll in SC. He took 1% in NH. And he's currently at 2% in FL. He's the first one that needs to be voted off the island...
Here would be an interesting simulation to run.
Since everybody on this forum seems to think like Kansas Girl: “Conservatives have to make a move and unite behind a single candidate NOW or Romney is going to be the nominee even though he is uwanted by 75% of the GOP voters.”,
What if everybody stayed in and actually allowed each state to go through the primary process and primary voters voted like the Rasmussen poll predicts, the Romney: 28.5%Gingrich: 23% Paul: 18% Santorum: 11.5%. in every state.
Would Romney then have enough committed delegates to win the nomination by virtue of winning the winner-take-all states with 28.5% plurality of the votes plus 28.5% of the proportional state delegates, or would the conservative opposition to Romney have more delegates at the Republican National Convention?
The reason to project this out would be to convince conservatives that they do not need to run over the Romney cliff like a bunch of lemmings, just because Romney has the 20-something percent of Republicans who are liberals in his pocket.
Perry’s the key. I supported him and believe that he’s got the money, talent and infrastructure to win, but at some point he’s got to back out. Without coalescing around a single opponent Perry’s just helping Romney with conservatives splitting their votes.
At this point we need to prepare for Romney’s nomination.