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Tonight’s GOP contests — primaries in Alabama and Mississippi and a caucus in Hawaii — have the potential to really shake up the race. The two Southern primaries in particular could potentially make or break some campaigns.
We will be tracking the results tonight at Firedoglake. Polls close in Alabama and Mississippi at 8 pm Eastern. The Hawaii Caucus runs until 8 pm local time, which is 2 am Eastern.
There has been relatively little recent polling of Alabama and Mississippi, but the polling that has taken place shows the top three candidates extremely close in both states. In Alabama PPP found Mitt Romney 31%, Newt Gingrich 30%, Rick Santorum 29% and Ron Paul 8%. In Mississippi PPP found Gingrich 33%, Romney 31%, Rick Santorum 27% and Ron Paul 7%. So it’s conceivable that any of the three top candidates could win either or both these states tonight.
A double win by Romney in the South, where he has struggled, would likely create the impression that the primary is completely over. A double win for Gingrich would give him the justification and boost needed to continue his run. A double win for Santorum could potentially push Gingrich out of the race and allow Santorum to finally get the head to head fight with Romney he’s been seeking.
Both Santorum and Gingrich probably need wins tonight. But for Romney, simply having Gingrich do well enough to keep running and splitting the very conservative vote would be a decent outcome. Winning a plurality in the South would help Romney end this primary quickly, but Romney doesn’t technically need to win the South to get the nomination, thanks to his strengths elsewhere.
In Hawaii I’m not aware of any polling as far, but I predict Romney should be a strong favorite to win there. Romney has the larger and better operation, which tends to help in states that receive less attention. Most importantly, Hawaii has a surprisingly large Mormon population. Roughly 5% of the state are members of the LDS. Mormons have been voting strongly for Romney, and so far Romney has won every state where Mormons make up 4% or more of the population. If the pattern holds up Romney should win Hawaii by a healthy margin.
I will be live blogging the results from Alabama and Mississippi on the FDL main page tonight.
12 Comments
Jon, thanks for the post. It’s looking more and more like Romney is destined to be the nominee.
As I said to DDay earlier, I’m not sure how you stomach this shit. Seeing Mittens gain momentum as a candidate for National Office makes me sick.
Momentum is hardly the right world. Romney radically outspending terrible candidates and only slowly and painfully accumulating more delegates
Even knowing the south a well as I do, I can’t call these races. There are so many factors involved and the candidates are so awful. But I’m having a great time trying to get into the heads of voters there.
True. I guess momentum doesn’t describe it. It’s more akin to the slow crawl of stone slabs towards the building sites of the Pyramids. Painful, arduous, uphill, but never-ceasing.
At this point I don’t see a viable path for any of the other candidates to secure the nomination. It seems more and more inevitable that Mittens will be losing to Barack in November.
That seems like it would be sticky. And like you’d have to scrape stuff off your shoes afterward.
It’s not quite as simple as it seems. At Huff Post this morning there is a poll that show that 54% of GOP voters in Ms believe that interracial marriage should remain legal. 29% said it shouldn’t. 54% is a rather startling number, don’t you think?
I do find that startling. Only 54% of registered GOPhux in MS think the colored folks should be able to marry their white wimmins.
Pretty disgusting. I thought we had come a bit further than that.
But think of the strides that have been made. Ten years ago the numbers would mostly have been reversed, if not worse. I’m not saying that 54% is good – I’m saying it’s better than I expected.
You’re the optimistic one here, Twain. I think it’s obscene that almost half a voting bloc in any state of our Union still feels that people should be denied rights based on any difference, be it skin color, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Just obscene.
It is an improvement, though. You’re right on that. I wonder how the Mississippi GOPhux feel about gay marriage…
Agreed. I’m having fun.
But, I’m easily entertained.
Let’s not fail to recognize that the voter turnout at the republican primaries has been very low. OTOH, the “polls” have bveen pretty accurate this year. As mentioned above, a “double win” for Gingrich would be very significant. If Romney loses both southern states, likewise. Oh, I don’t doubt that Romney’s “inevitability” is……inevitable. But a few strategic losses here and there may make it impossible for him to accumulate enough delegates.
Our state primary, Texas, is now on May 29 and it could very possible make or break Romney’s journey.
I don’t think the GOP has had a presidential nominee who didn’t win Southern primaries since, oh, McCain in 2008. The Money Boyz pick the nominee, always have, always will. They know to put a veneer of populism on their choice — wouldn’t you like to have a beer with dry-drunk W? — but what matters most is that their nominee understand finance. And Finance’s needs.
Unfortunately, McCain got away from them under the “who’s next?” rule of primogeniture in the GOP. He didn’t understand finance, and he didn’t really win the Southern primaries. Well, he won SCarolina in 2008 but that was only thanks to Fred Thompson staying in.
See how that works, nowadays? There’s always a friendly GOP conservative to split the vote when the bankers’ frontrunner needs it…