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No matter what happens tonight in the Iowa caucus, a week from now it will be all about Mitt Romney. After Iowa comes the New Hampshire primary and the winner there is now practically a foregone conclusion. According to Suffolk New Hampshire tracking polling Romney currently has more than twice as much support as anything other candidate. This is basically the same massive head Romney has held for months. From Suffolk:
The poll shows Romney leading with 43 percent of the vote – up 2 points from a day earlier, followed by Ron Paul (17 percent), Jon Huntsman (9 percent), and Newt Gingrich (8 percent), while another 7 percent was split among GOP hopefuls Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. Fifteen percent remain undecided.
In addition, Romney’s support in New Hamshire is very firm. According to the poll 73 percent of his supporters say they are unlikely to change their minds. Unless there is a major scandal Romney is likely to hold his large share of the vote, while Ron Paul is also guaranteed to at least get a significant percentage from his devoted base.
What this means is that even if a single candidate (like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry) managed to gather the support of all the other remaining candidates and win over the vast majority of the undecideds, they would still come short of beating Romney in New Hampshire.
Don’t be surprised if the media starts turning its attention to South Carolina rather quickly after Iowa, because there is so little suspense about how completely Romney will dominate New Hampshire.
8 Comments
Poor NH. Everyone is already tired of the “race” and wishes it would just go away – IMO
romney is the anointed one and we might as well get used to calling him “president romney”…
And, yes, I DO take it personally
According to RCP AND my cousin Earl, Gingrich is holding a 37-21 lead over Romney in S.Carolina. The question, acording to Earl, is show many Gingrich supporters will leave him when he finishes 4th or worse in Iowa and loses NH by “a bunch”. Earl says Carolinians are very fickle.
Romney can only make news, and NH can only make news, if Mitt drastically under-performs there. In actual voting, not pre-ballot polling, which has firmly established the high expectations Mitt must meet. At this point, anything less than swamping his opponents will (should) be seen as Mitt faltering.
Florida polls……Gingrich down, Romney UP. Ifn Romney wins Iowa, NH and FL….fat lady just may be “in the wings”.
Everywhere in New Hampshire except a couple of real small towns like Dixville Notch has Diebold voting machines.
“Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.
“We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines,” said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team “We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine.”
http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/
Thanks for that “reassuring” info.
At the end of the day, though, I’ll be repetitive: the 1% ultimately control the Diebold machines, and the 1% ultimately will determine who “wins.” Some outside hackers can do their damage, but that’ll be covered up, if the votes don’t “show” what the 1% wants. Just saying….
New Hampshire means nothing,Massachusetts candidates always win NH see Tsongas,Dukakis and Kerry.Romney needs to win South Carolina and Florida and neither will be a walk in the park.
With the economy getting better,Obama will win anyway in November.