Talk Elections

It’s places such as Mobile where Romney will have to perform strongly if he is to pull out a victory Tuesday. His formula in both states is remarkably similar: run well along the less socially conservative Gulf Coast, clean up in the largest city and its heavily GOP suburbs (Birmingham and Jefferson County in Alabama, Jackson and Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties in Mississippi) and pull votes out of the educated population hubs in the northern part of the state (Huntsville [the other Madison County, this time in AL] in Alabama and DeSoto County, just south of Memphis, in Mississippi).

From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. American Samoa Standard Time (UTC-11) tonight, Republicans on this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean will hold their caucus.

Local GOP chairman Victor T. Tofaeono, a superdelegate, is hopeful caucus attendees will agree to commit all nine delegates to one candidate.

Intrade

Drudge is being misleading. Those are numbers from his crappy online poll, extracted to be only MS/AL voters.

ALABAMA:


Republicans only (not indies or Democrats).

1. Santorum 34%

2. Gingrich and Romney 31%

-- Republicans are making up 66% of the vote today, independents are 28%, and Democrats are 6%.

-- 73% of Alabama voters are evangelical.

MISSISSIPPI:

-- 80% of voters are evangelical, 17% are independent, and 4% are Democrats.

-- 45% of voters said their religious beliefs mattered a "great deal" in choice.

UPDATE: Here are some more exits, via CNN...

MISSISSIPPI:

-- On who's most likely to beat Obama: Romney 52% Gingrich 24% Santorum 21%. Relatedly, 42% say beating Obama is the most important criteria, 19% say being a "true conservative" is most important and 19% say it's "strong moral character.

ALABAMA:

-- 39% say "beating Obama" is most important quality in a candidate; 22% say it's "strong moral character, and 17% say being a "true conservative" is most important.

Washington is 100% reported

I guess Lowndes and Lauderdale are arguable bright spots for Romney, but no freaking way they're enough.  I guess Romney could get insanely lucky, but I really doubt it.

I would not call any of those counties "urban" but whatevs

Rick Santroum had a good night, beating polls in both Mississippi and Alabama and carrying both states.

I'm not sure if it qualifies as a great night, however. Mr. Santorum's advantage in the delegate count should be relatively modest: the Associated Press has called 22 delegates for him between the two states so far, versus 18 for Mitt Romney and 17 for Newt Gingrich. A number of delegates have yet to be decided in these states, but both divide their delegates in a relatively proportional way. And if Mr. Romney wins the caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa, he could potentially take more delegates overall from the evening.

Moreover, these were the sort of states that Mr. Romney was "supposed" to lose based on their demographics. Although the polls overestimated Mr. Romney's standing, projections based on demographic models did reasonably well.

Mr. Romney will not have such excuses, however, if he loses Illinois, which votes a week from today. It's the only contest that evening and Mr. Romney is thought to be the favorite there, although polls and my demographic model show a fairly tight race.

Mr. Romney will have a significant lead in delegates even if he loses Illinois. But a loss there would be more characteristic of those scenarios where he falls short of a delegate majority and needs help from super delegates and other unpledged delegates to win the nomination.

The bar for Mr. Santorum to actually overtake Mr. Romney in delegates is much higher. Illinois would be a first step toward a more competitive path, but hardly a sufficient one. Still, it might be Mr. Santorum's best remaining opportunity to shift the overall course of the race.

Huckabee had dropped out by that point

Mississippi - 98.8% reporting (1866/1889)
Santorum - 92,843 (32.9%)
Gingrich - 88,333 (31.3%)
Romney - 85,579 (30.3%)
Paul - 12,456 (4.4%)
   
Alabama - 96.7% reporting (2065/2136)
Santorum - 204,333 (34.5%)
Gingrich - 173,303 (29.3%)
Romney - 171,261 (29.0%)
Paul - 29,432 (5.0%)

Mitt spent money and got delegates. In fact, he actually will probably end up with more delegates than he expected. And he got a little bit bigger percent of the vote than he had in previous southern contests.

The narative going in was that Romney is weak in the south

He had a chance to change that narrative and missed it, but Santorum didn't over-perform to an extent that put Mitt's future plan in jeopardy.

In fact, Rick actually came in a bit behind the recent Nate Silver 'baseline of Romney winning and way behind the scenario where he has to be in order to stop Romney.