Well, if Tom Jensen’s poll numbers are to be believed (and PPP has been pretty much spot on in the past with a good track record) then Stupor Tuesday it could be a long, long day for the forces of Romnevibility(tm).
The news is good for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and bad for Rick Santorum in PPP’s final polls of the three biggest Super Tuesday states.
In Ohio Romney leads with 37% to 36% for Santorum, 15% for Gingrich, and 11% for Ron Paul.
In Tennessee Santorum leads with 34% to 29% for Romney, 27% for Gingrich, and 8% for Paul.
In Georgia Gingrich leads with 47% to 24% for Romney, 19% for Santorum, and 8% for Paul.
A week ago Santorum had a huge lead in Tennessee, a decent sized one in Ohio, and seemed like he had a good chance for second in Georgia. Now he’s barely holding on in Tennessee, ever so slightly behind in Ohio, and seems doomed for third in Georgia.
Romney’s fortunes have swung the other direction. What was looking like a runner up finish in Ohio is looking more like a win with each passing day. He has an outside chance at pulling off an upset win in Tennessee. And it looks like he’ll finish a solid second in Georgia.
The news for Gingrich is good too. It’s been expected he would win Georgia, but it looks now like he could even hit the 50% mark. And he’s pulled within striking distance of Santorum and Romney in Tennessee.
We’re at a tipping point. A Gingrich win in Georgia with him getting over 50% keeps him in the game, as does a Santorum win in Tennessee (especially if Romney slips into 3rd there.) Should Slick Rick pull off a win in Ohio to boot, all balls will be locked for multiball and the chaos will truly begin, as Tuesday will only make the national GOP picture even more messy.
If on the other hand Romney can win Ohio and surprise in the Volunteer State, Romnevitability(tm) will rise. It could go either way at this point. Me, I’m rooting for multiball, then for the table to break and the balls to go flying everywhere. Maybe knock over a few bystanders, roll out into the street, cause hipsters to ironically fall. Yeah, the kind of multiball that makes the local news and forces some local reporter to schlep out to where they still have pinball machines and pizza by the slice with “cheese” and do a report with a straight face with the chyron underneath reading “BIZARRE PINBALL ACCIDENT DOWNTOWN INJURES FOUR.”. I’m all for that. Let’s go with that. Yeah.
Also, what Doug said.
jrg
What irks me about this is that here in NC, I need to show up to vote against the gay-bashing amendment, but since we have a semi-closed primary, I can’t vote for that clown Santorum to further ratfuck the GOP fail parade.
I should change my registration to be an independent.
Southern Beale
TIn-foil hat crowd sez Tim Gheitner was arrested last week and released? And there’s a media blackout about it? I haven’t seen anything about it and the only link seems to show a nearly year old clip from Fox News that doesn’t seem to mention anything about it at all.
Anyone know where this is coming from?
cmorenc
For however long the GOP seems inclined to continue along with their circular-firing-squad tournament, we progressives should stay out of their way and not mess up a good thing by attempting to meddle. IMHO “Operation Hilarity” did in fact turn out to be counterproductive, and probably wound up persuading more than enough among the bona fide GOP primary electorate in Michigan who otherwise would have been weakly inclined to turn out that they should turn out after all and vote with limp enthusiasm for Mitt rather than let crossover saboteurs tactically hand victory to a probably weaker general-election candidate in Santorum. In other words, yes dem crossovers increased Santorum’s vote total by three or four percentage points, but probably also increased overall turnout for Romney by an at least offsetting amount, and gave Romney ammo to cheapen Santorum’s accomplishment in finishing a close second in the eyes of GOP primary voters in other upcoming primary states like Ohio.
PeakVT
cause hipsters to ironically fall.
Could they fall in any other way?
Also, too, Rih failed to get qualify in three Ohio districts, so he could win the vote but still loose significantly in the delegate count.
Violet
Heard on the news this morning that even if Rick wins Ohio he can only get half (or some?) of the delegates because he didn’t fill out some paperwork correctly. These guys are all fail.
I thought all the southern states voted in Super Tuesday, but it’s only Georgia and then Virginia, which doesn’t really count since Rick’s not on the ballot. And then Tennessee, although it’s not quite full on Confederate south. Neither is Oklahoma, although it’s Full Wingnut.
mistermix
I’d be willing to countenance some Santormentum if he didn’t have the most fucked up campaign organization since, well, Newt Gingrich’s.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10583286-rick-santorums-amateur-hour
When it’s woulda-coulda-shoulda time for Newt and Rick after Super Tuesday, they’ll both regret running campaigns to stay relevant to Fox News viewers rather than real campaigns.
Face
Santorum spread himself too thin. I’m sure he’s made his mark on his athletic supporters, but his bubbles will burst with the Indy crowd and his streak will end. And what a black mark he left on US politics.
Southern Beale
@Violet:
Just read that over at ABC:
Probably couldn’t find anyone willing to put their names down as a Santorum delegate. It’s not just FAIL it’s REVULSION.
Southern Beale
@Face:
GROAN!
:-)
Brachiator
A Gingrich win in Georgia is meaningless. It’s his home state. If he cannot win in a state where he has no personal or political connections, his continuing to campaign is meaningless, especially if Santorum does not do well.
Gingrich’s angel, Adelson is on record as saying that he likes Romney; to a large degree he continues to bankroll Newt in order to deny Santorum votes. If Santorum starts to fade, there is no reason to keep Newt in the game.
If Santorum falls behind in Ohio, Romney can do that Mittmentum victory dance thing, and claim that he is clearly the Man. Santorum might sputter along for a while, but without some clear victories, he will be a dead man walking.
dmsilev
@mistermix: To be fair, I’m sure neither Newt nor Frothy actually expected to be even vaguely in contention. 6 or 8 months ago, who would have thought that (a) Mitt Romney would be so tone-deaf that I can’t call him tin-eared without getting an angry letter from the Tin Anti-Defamation Society and (b) the only vaguely serious contender to actually run would quickly prove to be a dribbling idiot?
Quincy
I too root for multiball, but we may not be that fortunate. Silver projects Romney to win big on delegates, even if he doesn’t necessarily win the states. Losing Ohio in addition to Georgia, Tennessee and the rest would certainly hurt Romney’s media narrative and prompt at least another week of stories about his struggles with blue collar voters, but at some point it will become clear that the other clowns are making no headway on the delegate count, Romney is inevitable and the propped up horse race will just sort of fall apart.
goethean
Santorum should try to knock Gingrich out in Georgia. If Gingrich were to drop out, Santorum’s prospects would rise.
Poopyman
Me, I’m rooting for injuries
Oh, same thing then, except I was referring more to the principals.
@Violet: @Southern Beale: I don’t see this as a big deal. We’re talking Republicans here, people! They can change the rules after the game, remember?
My guess is that if Rih wins convincingly (whatever that is), they’ll award the delegates to him anyway. I’ll be heartbroken if they don’t, too.
(Edited for spelling fail.)
c u n d gulag
Don’t forget – neither Icky Sticky Ricky nor Newt will be on the ballot in VA.
HA!
Further giving evidence, that if you can’t run a half-decent campaign, how do you expect to run a country?
Besides horribly, that is…
I’ll say this much for “Baby Doc” Bush – his people knew how to run a campaign.
So do the Romney people, for that matter – it’s too bad for them that their candidate, Mitt Romney, keeps suffering from “Athlete’s Tongue” by putting his foot in his mouth all the time…
Violet
@Brachiator:
I agree this is how the media narrative will go.
The only two people on the ballot in VA are Paul and Romney. Is there any move by NotRomney voters to vote for Paul to send a message to Romney or the Republican establishment?
I hope Newt does really poorly in Georgia. Is Georgia an open primary state? I have a friend I might be able to talk into crossing over and voting for, say, Rick.
Frankensteinbeck
@c u n d gulag:
I’m told Romney’s ground game is close to nonexistent, and his campaign only looks competent when you compare it to his opposition. Sums up the whole primary right there.
Cassidy
Yeah, we’re in Calvinball territory at this point.
Brachiator
@Violet:
It’s not just the media. Gingrich has not made any significant moves, despite his name recognition. GOP voters simply are not buying him as the voice of the conservative movement. Unless he wins somewhere other than Georgia, there is no reason to take his candidacy seriously.
Doesn’t look like it. A recent poll shows Romney crushing Paul in Virginia.
The polls show Gingrich doing well in Georgia. But as I say, for him, this is a meaningless “beauty contest.”
Meanwhile, look for Romney to start rolling up more endorsements. The insiders now feel that it is safe to embrace him and to try to sell him harder to reluctant GOP voters.
Soonergrunt
OT, but just have to share it,
AOL had dropped advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show and website.
From AOL’s Facebook page (Irony of ironies):
At AOL one of our core values is that we act with integrity. We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values. As a result we have made the decision to suspend advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Radio show.
Southern Beale
Apparently Rush’s ratings aren’t all that, anyway.
Ken
@Southern Beale (quoting ABC): but [Santorum’s] failure submit full slates in some places will result in “unbound” delegates, which will be up for grabs after Super Tuesday.
So, more stealth Paul delegates? I like the multiball idea, but what I’d like even more is for Romney to spend another couple hundred million fighting through the next months, then get to the convention and lose to Paul on the first ballot.
Zagloba
TN’s got a long, looong early voting period that ended a week ago. I know I voted, I think Southern Beale said she did too. Anyway, the alea may already be jacta.
taylormattd
So what the hell is wrong with the site? It keeps loading in a mobile version when I’m on my desktop. And yes, I have clicked the dumb little “visit our desktop site” link below. I can refresh and get the desktop that way. But when I go to leave a comment here, right back at the mobile site.
Dumb.
amk
@taylormattd: It’s all fucked up for me too.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Rush’s ratings have always been inflated. ClearChannel will run him on more than one station in a market then count each station as an independent rating for numbers purposes even though he’s just overlapping listeners a lot of the time. The numbers game gives them better charging rates for ads and gives El Rushbo undeserved bragging rights. Nice work if you can get it.
amk
@Yutsano: Are the advertisers that stoopid to fall for such manipulations ?
Cacti
Not really seeing where the good news is for Gnewt.
He’s been favored in Geawgia all along.
Zagloba
@Yutsano: I also seem to remember something about using multiple ratings metrics and deliberately confusing them — something about a “cume”, meaning cumulative listenership over the whole program, which counts a listener once for each ten minutes or half an hour or however often an average listener switches stations.
Though considering that Rush’s listeners have the attention span of goldfish, maybe that’s not so inappropriate after all.
Xenos
@PeakVT:
Wow. It is like wheels of fail within wheels of fail… or a set of matryoshka dolls of fail.
chopper
really, newtie’s ego here is so amazing. he knows he has no real chance anymore but he’s still in it. i understand earlier it was supposed to be about destroying mittens with this guy, but the best way to do that would be to drop out and endorse santorum.
but he won’t, and his rage boner is going to end up fucking both himself and mcfrothy.
Calouste
PPP had a few bloopers this year IIRC, although mostly with the caucusses. In WA they had Paul and Santorum off by about 8% each, and in Colorado and Minnesota they had Santorum at more than 10% under his final figures.
feebog
@ Yutsano:
There are many places in the country where you can pick Rush up on two, three and even four stations at the same time. I can remember driving from Redding CA to Bakersfield along I5 and it seems like every damn station in the central valley is carrying him. Of course, not all those Dittoheads overlap, but I’m sure a significant number do. Thank Dog for SSR.
jheartney
How does “overlapping listeners” work in radio? Do people have two radios going, each tuned to different stations?