For weeks now, I and many others have been saying that the results of Super Tuesday won’t be decisive—that the bruising G.O.P. nomination battle is likely to drag on into May or June, and maybe even until the convention, in August.
On the eve of the voting in ten states, with four hundred and thirty-seven delegates at stake, an alternative scenario is looming—one that’s much more favorable to Mitt Romney. With Rick Santorum’s support seemingly falling away in many places, following his defeat in Michigan and a barrage of negative publicity about his religious views, it is now quite conceivable that Romney could do well enough for the Republican Party panjandrums, desperate to put an end to the internecine warfare, to hail him as the nominee-elect.
If this does happen, the primaries in other states will continue, of course; and Romney will take some quite some time to reach the threshold of more than eleven hundred delegates that he needs to formally assure himself of the nomination. All of tomorrow’s states allocate delegates on a proportional basis, which means that nobody can establish an insurmountable lead. But with the eventual result beyond doubt, much of the rancor and media interest would go out of the race. The focus of the story would switch from “Romney versus Santorum” to “Romney versus Obama,” which is where the Mittster and the Republican National Committee have wanted it placed from the beginning.
With a lot of new polling data released over the past forty-eight hours, the outlook for tomorrow is becoming clearer. In four states, Romney is virtually certain to record the biggest voting share: Idaho (heavy Mormon presence), Massachusetts (home state), Vermont (moderate state), and Virginia (Santorum and Gingrich aren’t even on the ballot). Romney is also favored to win Alaska and North Dakota, both of which he took in 2008, although no recent polling has been carried out in either of those states. Conversely, he has little chance of winning Georgia, where home-town boy Newt Gingrich continues to hold a big lead.
The battleground states are Ohio and, surprisingly enough, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Only a week ago, Romney was trailing in all three. But, following his victory in Michigan and Arizona, the polls started turning in his favor, and against Santorum. A weekend victory in Washington State maintained Romney’s momentum, and Santorum doesn’t have the money or the organization to do much about it.
Let’s assume the Mittster wins all six states he is favored in: Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Vermont, and Virginia. If he scores a big comeback victory in Ohio and also manages to pick up a surprise win in Oklahoma or Tennessee, he will be well placed to declare the national contest virtually over. If he’s somehow able to win all three of these states, it will really be knockout blow.
In terms of the media narrative, much depends on Ohio, where the latest polls show a tight race. But Romney appears to have the momentum. For example, a week ago, a Quinnipiac poll showed him trailing Santorum by seven points: twenty-nine per cent to thirty-six per cent. Today, the same organization released a new poll, which has Romney ahead by three points: thirty-four per cent to thirty-one per cent. “Just as he did in Florida and Michigan, Romney has erased a sizable deficit a week before the primary to grab the momentum in the final 24 hours,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
In Tennessee, too, things seem to be moving in Romney’s favor. Until recently, he was badly behind there. Two polls taken before last week’s primaries in Michigan and Arizona showed Santorum up by close to twenty points. A new survey from We Ask America, which was published on Monday, actually has Romney leading Santorum by a point—thirty to twenty-nine—a statistical tie. Another new survey, this one from Public Policy Polling, has Santorum retaining a five-point lead—thirty-four to twenty-nine—but it also shows late deciders breaking in Romney’s favor.
If Romney wins Tennessee, where roughly two-thirds of the voters are evangelicals, it will be a big shock—and a huge fillip for his campaign. Even if he runs Santorum close there, it will be a very good result for him—and more than enough for the G.O.P. establishment to declare him sufficiently acceptable to conservatives.
Oklahoma, for decades a bastion of conservatism, remains Santorum’s best hope of a win in the South. (That’s where the Census Bureau places it.) On Sunday, he jokingly adopted it as his Super Tuesday home state. A poll from American Research Group carried out late last week showed him retaining a healthy eleven-point lead over Romney among Oklahoma Republicans: thirty-seven per cent to twenty six per cent. But, over the weekend, Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative stalwart and opponent of gay marriage, endorsed Romney. It seems unlikely that a single endorsement could cost Santorum the state, but we’ll see.
A week ago, a Santorum loss in either Tennessee or Oklahoma seemed unthinkable. That such possibilities are even being discussed shows how far things have moved in Romney’s favor. It’s not just the polls, and it’s not that social conservatives have suddenly shed their suspicions of Romney. But there seems to be general feeling in the G.O.P., certainly in its upper reaches, that it’s time to call a halt to the circular firing squad. When the voting starts tomorrow, it looks like Romney will be the beneficiary of that calculation.
Illustration by Bob Staake.
