Talk Elections

New Poll: South Carolina President by Rasmussen on 2007-11-20 (https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/PRESIDENT/2008R/polls.php?action=indpoll&id=45200711200)

Summary: Giuliani: 13%, McCain: 9%, Romney: 21%, Thompson, F: 21%, Other: 23%, Undecided: 13%

Poll Source URL: Full Poll Details (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2008__1/2008_presidential_election/south_carolina/election_2008_south_carolina_republican_primary)

Huckabee: 12%

Paul: 8%

Giuliani's done

Except about 5 seconds after this primary concludes the primaries for real states will be taking place, and no one is really going to care about what happened in 3 states with a combines EV total of 19.

Soulty, you're much more experienced than this. You know it does matter... otherwise we wouldn't be even bothering.

Howard Dean would beg to differ.

Giuliani will not be the Republican nominee. He'll come in a distant third behind Romney and Huckabee in Iowa, probably second to Romney in New Hampshire, and at this rate will come in fourth to Romney, Thompson and Huckabee in South Carolina (well, maybe ahead of Thompson, whose voters will switch mostly to Huckabee after Iowa).

I know that is matters traditionally, yes.  But I think that, with the way the primaries are organized this year, and with the fact that so much talking down of the early primaries has happened in the past 6 years, or so.  I would say that most Americans are now openly asking "Why in the Hell does Iowa matter so much?"  Now, its good for the press of the candidate who wins the first three, but only if that candidate wins in a sweep.  Romney is the only one with a chance to do it, and I don't think he will.

Not if Huckabee saves him in Iowa...

you're entitled to that, certainly, but history doesn't like you.  and if Romney sweeps through IA, NH, MI, SC, and NV, I don't think Giuliani can rally and stop him.

As I said, should he sweep, then I agree, he would win, as would anyone else, but I don't think Romney will and he is the only one who has a chance.  I think he'll be embarassed in Michigan, even more so because he is the son of the former governor, and the "Romney Network" is supposedly still in place.  Michigan proves that Romney's people aren't masters of the expectations game, because they are pumping up his expectations there when he very well could lose.

True, but if your not even being competitive in the first three thats a big problem.  If Giuliani happened to have one tough state, and despite not winning the other two was at least competitive than maybe he can make up for it later.  However, it looks like if he finished 3rd in Iowa he will be very lucky.  Looks like a 4th place finish there, followed by a 3rd place finish in N.H and a fourth in S.C, being WELL behind in all three states.  You might not need to win the first three states, but you do need at least some momentum from them, and it looks like Rudy will have zero.

Thompson's still nothing other than a fad - his support will die down, and Huckabee's will rise.

Interesting piece of news from Rasmussen (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2008__1/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll):


Lets hope they polled every single state ... :)

The concentional wisdom is that a candidate gets on a winning streak and gains the momentum and sweeps to victory.  That is the Romnney battle plan obviously.  He wants to copy what happened with the Kerry experience in '04.

Here's the difference this time.  Democrats suddenly realized in 2004  that Kerry would be a much better candidate than Howard Dean in the general.  Hell, they read the polls showing Dean a sure loser to Bush.  Democrats wanted to beat Bush and happily jumped on board the Kerry express to insure a competitive general election.

Romney doesn't have that "I'm the most electable candidate" thing going for him that Kerry had over Dean.  Quite the opposite.  Republicans can read the polls.  In state after state he is getting clobbered by Hillary.  In my own state for example, he's down 1 to Hillary according to Rasmussen.  This is in Texas for crying out loud.  Same poll has Rudy and McCain up 11.  It's like that in every state.  Look it up.

Republicans aren't going to climb on board with a candidate who guarantees Hillary and Bill are back in the White House.  If you think that, you are completely ignoring Republican feelings about Hillary.  Democrats proved to be pragmatic in 2004 when it came to finding someone they thought could beat their arch enemy Bush.  Republicans will do the same in 2008 when it comes to beating their dreaded enemy, Hillary Clinton.

BTW, they won't turn to Huckabee either, another sure loser.

Why so I can depress myself again?

I just hope they polled Obama and Edwards for once.

I think there's a lot to what agcatter says. Here in IL the GOP base seems to only agree on one thing - how much they dislike the idea of Pres. HRC. The schedule creates an opportunity for the candidates who poll well against HRC to let the field shrink going into the big states. That sets up a smaller field in February where the case can be made to consider electability.

Giuliani is organizing here in IL in a big way as he is in the other large states with 2/5 primaries. McCain is also quite active here, but Romney has had a smaller presence. Thompson still has a following with conservatives, but that's faded in the last few weeks, and it's not clear where they will go.

Also I forgot to mention: Go Ron Paul!

ron paul keeps leaving me voicemail each week. i am sick of him.

Really?  Thanksgiving was the first time my dad didn't complain that Fred Thompson called.  And I got home from college and had letters from good old Fred (and I'm a Romney/Huckabee(/Tancredo/Paul) Guy).

Hold on a second. That actor is still in the race?

The Paul thing is getting a little out of control. You can't walk into the mall without these people coming at you now.

ron paul is the only candidate the college republicans support here at UNC. none of them support giuliani, one for romney, and none for mccain. its insane and i dont understand it.

I think it's sort of like experiencing Eugene McCarthy's supporters in 1968, only in miniature. Deranged, running against the establishment, and with no hope at all of winning.

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it now.

People here are too influenced by 2004. The nomination isn't always decided by the first states. The fact that every winner except Clinton has won one of the early states is misleading, because in many of these cases the race went on for a long time afterwards.

For instance, Carter won both Iowa and New Hampshire in 1976 but still had to fight for the nomination all the way to the end. Ford in the same year also won both but had an extremely close battle with Reagan into the actual convention. When you have a situation where one candidate is extremely strong in all the later states and they're coming in one big shebang closely after the other states things may be different. While I'm the first to agree that Guliani has a problem in being so weak in the early states I think calling him done because of it is overdoing it.

I think Gustaf is fundamentally correct. For every nomination decided by early primaries there was another where they didn't matter. The mix of candidates and the primary calendar have to be looked at as a whole. This is a very different field from 2004, 2000, or 1992. There might be some resemblance to the Dem field in 1988 (look up jokes about the seven dwarfs, or given the way some fell by the wayside, the seven deadly sins.) Even if there is a resemblance there is a very different calendar in 2008 and that will impact the field as well.

There are voters in the big states on 2/5 who will watch the earlier states, but I think it will focus more on gaffes and collapses, not on specific placing in the early states.

Well, a couple of points on that.  First, in most of the recent nomination fights, there's been a similar pattern.  You have a strong frontrunner who suddenly looks vulnerable once one of his challengers catches fire by making a strong showing in one or more of the early states.  The frontrunner still usually ends up winning in the end because of money, institutional advantages, or other factors.  So part of it is just evaluating how strong the frontrunners are.  Are they like GW Bush in 2000, who held on to win despite McCain's mo' from winning NH (and later MI), or are they more like Dean in 2004, who crumbled as soon as he came in 3rd in IA?  I think it's pretty clear that there is no strong frontrunner on the GOP side.  Giuliani leads the national polls, but people don't even agree on whether he *is* the frontrunner, for obvious reasons.  On the Dem. side, it's more of an open question as to whether HRC is a strong enough frontrunner to withstand a strong showing by Obama in the early states.

With regard to Gustaf's other point, that the nomination fight can sometimes go on for many months, after the early states have been long forgotten.....well, that's the way it *used* to work.  But the recent trend towards frontloading, and so many primaries coming up at once seems to have resulted in the same pattern replaying itself in each of the last three or four nomination fights: There may be some back and forth in momentum in the first couple of weeks of primaries, but once you have the first big mult-state primary day, one of the candidates sweeps the bulk of those primaries, and their momentum becomes unstoppable.  That's why I think it's very unlikely that the nominations will still be undecided on Feb. 6th.  Not that it's impossible, since we have a small number of elections to use as guides, but the recent trend seems to be:

more frontloaded calendar -> early momentum becoming more important

Of course it doesn't have to turn out that way, but that's the way I'd bet.

Having said all that, I do actually agree with Gustaf that people are overdoing it when they say that Giuliani is "done".  These things are *way* too unpredictable for us to say that at this point.  However, I have a hard time seeing how Giuliani can start out 0-5, and still win the nomination.  He's going to have to win *somewhere* in those first couple of weeks.

I think the giuliani camp has said that they are trying to come in 2nd or strong third in iowa and then hang on to have a big win in Florida and Michigan and carry that over to the Feb 5th primaries. I just read a poll today that had Giuliani at 26% and Huckabee at 17% in second. It would be very interesting if Huckabee wins Iowa and has a strong showing in NH, wins SC, and then finishes close in Florida.

I will limit myself to agreeing that, yes, I don't think the nomination will be contested after Feb 6th. My point was basically that it oculd be competitive until then.