RUTHFULLY YOURS

After a narrow win in the Michigan primary (3 points) and a decisive win in the Arizona primary (20 points)  on Tuesday, Mitt Romney followed with a win in the Wyoming caucuses. He holds a 5-point lead in the only public poll ^[1] for the Washington state caucuses this Saturday. On Tuesday, ten states ^[2] will hold primaries or caucus events, with more delegates at stake on that day than have been awarded to date in the GOP nominating fight. With Romney opening up a double-digit lead nationally in the two most recent surveys ^[3] for the GOP nomination, how many states could he win on Super Tuesday?  If Romney does very well that day, will that effectively force at least one of his opponents to the sidelines?

So far in the GOP race, Mitt Romney has won almost twice as many ^[4] total votes as either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. Gingrich was Romney’s principal challenger in South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada; Santorum was his main rival in all the other states except Maine, where Ron Paul finished second. For those on the right who have maintained that Romney is a poor candidate, and is stuck at 25% of the GOP electorate, the data prove this contention false. His vote share to date is over 40%, and  he has exceeded the 40% level in several states — New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada, Michigan, and Arizona. In fact, the opposite appears to be true — there is about 25% of the GOP electorate stuck on not voting for Mitt Romney, and their votes have moved back and forth among possible contenders: Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich twice, and now Rick Santorum.

Looking at the ten states that will vote on Tuesday, geography will play a significant role. So far in this election cycle, momentum has meant relatively little. A candidate who wins one state has not been able to count on parlaying that victory into wins in the next contests. There have been momentum shifts, but they have been caused more by debate performances, performance on the stump, or  negative advertising. Rick Perry bombed in the debates. Herman Cain’s candidacy collapsed after charges of inappropriate sexual behavior. Newt Gingrich soared in the polls with fiery debate rhetoric, directed both at the national media and President Obama. Rick Santorum surged in Iowa the old-fashioned way — by living and campaigning in the state for months. Mitt Romney has soldiered on, finishing first or second everywhere except for a beauty contest in Missouri, using his advantage in campaign cash and the help of superPACs  to target whichever of his opponents was on the rise — Gingrich twice and now Santorum.

On Tuesday, Romney should win handily in Virginia, where only he and Ron Paul qualified for the ballot. He should clean up in Massachusetts, and is favored in Vermont (the only recent poll ^[5] in that state has Romney up by 7 points). Romney should also win in Idaho, where well over a quarter of the GOP voters may be Mormon. Mormon voters have favored Romney with about a 90% vote share so far in the race. It is hard to see Romney not winning these states, so the question becomes: how many more can he add?

The big prize is likely to be Ohio, which has become one of the true bellwether states in American presidential elections. Ohio has similar demographics as Michigan, but has a higher share of evangelical voters, is a bit more rural, and has a lower share of college educated voters. These differences from Michigan should make Ohio  more favorable ground for Rick Santorum, since Romney has done very well with the country-club Republican voters (incomes over 100K), and less well with blue-collar voters. Two weeks ago, Santorum opened up a big lead in Ohio, and as recently as the start of the week, he led Romney by 11 in the state. In the two state polls taken since the Michigan and Arizona primaries, the gap ^[6] between the two candidates has narrowed. Santorum now leads by 2 points  in Rasmussen, and 4 in a Quinnipiac survey. This is exactly the pattern that was seen in Michigan, where a big Santorum lead began to shrink in the week before the primary, and in the end, he lost the state narrowly to Romney.

Romney is likely to make Ohio the focus of his effort the next few days. If he can pull off a win in Ohio to add to victories in the other four states, he will have won the most competitive “headline” contest of the night, and added to his lead in primary victories and delegates won. He would also have beaten Santorum for a second time in a state where Santorum has argued he can attract Reagan Democrats and blue-collar voters in November against Obama.

If Santorum can hold on and win Ohio, he can lay claim to being the only real challenger to Romney and try to force Newt Gingrich from the race, thereby denying Romney the opportunity  to win in some future contests because conservative voters were divided between Santorum and Gingrich. Gingrich appears likely to win ^[7]  in his home state of Georgia on Tuesday, but trails everywhere else. Santorum is way ahead ^[8] in Tennessee and Oklahoma ^[9], and there are no polls in Alaska or North Dakota. Romney is making a campaign stop in North Dakota this weekend, suggesting he sees an opportunity  to win one more state that is being ignored by his opponents.

There is no evidence that Santorum will give up on the race, even if he has a disappointing night on Tuesday. Once a candidate gets a taste of being a frontrunner, which Santorum had for a few weeks, the  “I could be president bug” does not disappear very quickly. Newt Gingrich, who held the national  lead on two occasions, appears particularly embittered at Mitt Romney for what he believes were misleading attacks on his record that knocked him from his perch at the front of the pack. Gingrich was speaking to reporters at the end of 2011 as if it were a virtual certainty that he would be the nominee before any votes had been cast. Ironically, if Gingrich sees Santorum stumble on Tuesday, winning only in Tennessee and Oklahoma, and maybe Alaska, he might believe that his candidacy could for the third time rise from the dead. By sticking around, both he and Santorum would be fighting for their share of the non-Romney vote, increasing Romney’s chances of winning more of the future contests.

Due to the changes in GOP delegate selection rules (fewer winner-take-all states) and the delegate penalties assessed against  some states which moved their primaries up, the GOP race will be a longer slog to the finish than it would have been in earlier cycles. If Romney wins Ohio on Tuesday, plus finishes first in four or five other states, it is hard to see him being denied the nomination. But that does not mean that any of his opponents will gracefully leave the race.