Patterico's Pontifications

3/13/2012

An unhappy Trende for Romney

Filed under: 2012 Election — Karl @ 7:16 am



[Posted by Karl]

RCP’s Sean Trende is not a big fan of forecasting, but today he revisits the model I mentioned in wondering whether there might be a “Romney effect” should Mitt Romney be the GOP nominee (the most likely outcome).  Since he originally discussed this model, the campaign (more so the primaries than caucuses) have tended to show a geographic stability.  Mitt has generally won in the Northeast and Mountain West, Santorum in the Great Plains, and Gingrich in the Deep South, with Romney and Santorum splitting the Midwest based on urban vs rural factors.  The results have been fairly predictable, based on county shares of evangelicals, African-Americans, Latinos, college-educated voters, and Mormons. (These results support general findings from Jay Cost as well.)

Most troubling for Romney is that the more recent results show little to no momentum for Romney.  This may or may not matter in a general election, but usually momentum does play a role in primaries.  Trende is careful to note such momentum could develop.  The most recent Rasmussen poll suggests Romney’s support has increased among Republicans, but that is not necessarily predicitive of voting in future primaries.  If Mitt fails to get momentum — and if his rivals remain in the race — he will have a marginally worse slog than I anticipated in the upcoming Southern contests.  Simply eyeballing the balance of evangelicals and Catholics, I thought Romney could have an opportunity in Louisiana, but the results of Trende’s model may suggest otherwise.  Even so, I think the close states will remain close and that Indiana and Pennsylvania may not fall quite the way the model would suggest.

–Karl

16 Responses to “An unhappy Trende for Romney”

  1. Ding!

    Karl (6f7ecd)

  2. it’s hard to get momentum when the obamawhore soledad media decrees no momentum shall there be

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  3. Trende’s model “percentage of non-Paul” vote seems a rather drastic capitulation to accuracy at the expense of clarity.

    All the same, with Santorum up by 17 pts. in WI, 43% of the non-Paul vote to Romany just appears flawed. I’d be stunned to see Paul doing as well there as the MN caucus.

    Further Silver points out today that polling in AL and MS has historically missed the mark. He puts it that so far Santorum is out-performing the polls where he proves strong, but we might well say Romany is underperforming polls almost everywhere he isn’t dominant.

    gary gulrud (1de2db)

  4. but most people know that this election is a referendum on Obama I think – the Gingrich voters know that, the Paul monkeys know that, and the Romney people most definitely know that

    the poor confuzzled Santorum voters think 2012 is a referendum on Romney

    silly wazzles

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  5. 5. On Laura today Santorum said he expects to garner 3/4 of the IA delegates when they’re assigned.

    The voters have pretty much spoken, the Party will decide the outcome in Tampa.

    Gingrich/Palin in 2012.

    gary gulrud (1de2db)

  6. If Romney turns this into a simple math problem-$5 gas, recording-setting $231 billion deficit for the month of February, $16 trillion debt and counting-he can win in a walk. he’s not doing that. Insted he’s babbling about “believing in America” (lifted almsot unchanged from the opening sceme of “The Godfather”.Remarkably after watching Mccain essentially sabotaged by his own consultants Romeny hired them wholesale.

    Bugg (34ad0e)

  7. If Romney is the nominee, I expect a rash of Mormon polygamist characters on things like CSI and Hawaii Five-O, and maybe a few movies about the early Mormons. How about a Robert Downey Jr version of “A Study in Scarlet”?

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  8. Mr feets, Gingrich’s billionaire thinks that Gingrich voters think it’s a referendum on Romney.

    Icy (306668)

  9. old Sheldon said he could shovel some monies Mr. GOvernor Romney’s way at some point … he mostly just thinks Santorum is extreme and weird and wants to beat Obama really bad

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  10. “no momentum for Romney”

    What is this supposed to mean? He is still winning with the majority of the delegates. This is momentum that Santorum and Gingrich can crave.

    Nonetheless, in the general election, there is still a lot of answered questions like who is his running mate. He is close the gap with a southern senator or governor. You can’t beat Romney & a southerner VP with a Chicago Obama and a Delaware Biden.

    MyOpinion (4ff715)

  11. 10. ‘Inertia’ and ‘momentum’ are not quite the same thing. By ‘momentum’ we generally imply an acceleration of mass, as in ‘gaining momentum’.

    Speaking for the moment as tho I’ve no dog in the fight, which disposition Karl reliably maintains, the knock on Willard, from those who would like him to wrap this up irrespective of ideology, continues to be that he just wants to avoid injury and fails to carry the fight to the enemy.

    He continues to play out the clock but without a strong ground game, rallying the foot soldiers.

    A number of folks, including Silver and Trende, have looked ahead, based on the current ‘mo’, to tally bound and to-be-assigned delegates and find Romany will not have a first-ballot victory in hand by Tampa.

    Today he is talking about how that will hurt [his] candidacy whereas Santorum and Gingrich believe it bodes well for a candidate inspiring anything resembling enthusiasm.

    Do not look to the RNC aparatchiks to save his butt if he’s as weak in August as he has been lo these last 4 months.

    gary gulrud (d88477)

  12. 9. After Sununu threatened Sheldon he said he would be giving the Nominee bushels of green which satisfied the Borg at that junture.

    Shortly thereafter Sheldon kicked in another $10 M to Neuter’s super PAC.

    gary gulrud (d88477)

  13. BTW, Sheldon is worth $26 B, the $21 M he and his missus have tossed in Honey Badger’s plate is 0.04% of his purse, like a millionaire giving $400.

    gary gulrud (d88477)

  14. 11. By ‘momentum’ we generally imply an acceleration of mass, as in ‘gaining momentum’.
    In Super Tuesday, he got twice as many states and delegates than Santorum. Is “2 for 1” a constant or will it go “3 to 1”? I suppose you have a point if you want to argue for acceleration, but you can argue Romney will accumulate mass at a faster pace than the rest at the constant rate of 2 for 1.

    MyOpinion (ea4bfa)

  15. Obama is the guy with the unhappy trend(e).

    Colonel Haiku (946856)

  16. The whole new system prevents “momentum”. It’s going to be a slog throughout. The only “momentum” I’ve seen is between the “anti-Romney” candidates gaining momentum over one another. Look at the vote totals if you want to see “momentum”. Romney is eviscerating his opponents while every other candidate attacks him, while the DNC is attacking him, and while Newt has made it his life’s goal to destroy Romney’s nomination while pretending to be the “idea” man. He can’t string two sentences together without trashing Romney and people are getting tired of it. Santorum seems to be heading in that direction as well. The second voters see that he and Newt are willing to disenfanchise millions of Republican voters, everyone that has made donations, phone calls, and worked for their candidate in good faith when all of them had a chance, and want the Republicans to “broker” him or Newt into the nomination when they couldn’t even get half of Romney’s delegates then they’ll turn on them. I already have.

    Dave B (982f20)


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