Tuesday, January 08, 2008

HORSERACE, JOHN MCCAIN, MITT ROMNEY

Polls Good for McCain, But Confidence in Romney Camp

If you haven't read it already, go check out my piece on the homepage on how the New Hampshire Independents are likely to split today. It's got a couple of key points that clear up some conventional wisdom that isn't all that wise.

First, one local political science professor puts the number of independents who really could vote in either the GOP or Democratic primary at only 4 percent of the primary day electorate. Most independents lean one way or another, and tend to vote in the same party's primary, cycle after cycle.

Second, polling for much of the year indicated that independents were much more interested in the Democratic primary - a 60-40 split, roughly - and recent days have shown that suddenly swinging back to 50-50. So even if there was going to be a lack of independents on the Republican side, that doesn't appear to be the case now, unless there's some other sudden shift in the last 24 hours before polls open...

I say this for analytical purposes; if you're in New Hampshire, go out and vote and knock on doors and do anything else you like. But if, as polls indicate, John McCain is tied or just a bit ahead of Romney among registered Republicans, and is ahead among independents by two to one, then it doesn't really matter what proportion of the GOP electorate is independents.

ARG's final poll puts it: McCain leads Romney 30 percent  to 25 percent among Republicans and 34 percent to 21 percent among undeclared (independent) voters. Zogby's last poll says McCain "leads big among Independents, though Paul is beginning to draw some of the Indies’ support and is now polling double digits again in the North – taking votes away from McCain."

The only question is, does that 2:1 (or somewhere in that neighborhood) advantage come out in 24 percent of the GOP electorate, or is it way up closer to 40 percent?

Having said all that, I'm hearing reports of confidence in the Romney camp. Talk like, "high level officials have promised him a win," and "all the numbers are in place now." So maybe they see something the polls don't.

Other predictions, of a sort - Huckabee third, Ron Paul fourth, Giuliani fifth, but all three of those within a few points of one another, and Thompson in asterisk territory.

On the Democratic side, there should be plenty of independents, who like Obama a lot more than they like Hillary. I think he gets a big win tonight. Edwards slides into irrelevance, 10 points back from Hillary. Everybody else is an asterisk.

01/08 08:44 AMShare