John McCain at this moment is endorsing Mitt Romney in New Hampshire - sometimes being a maverick means dancing on your own grave. McCain of course won the New Hampshire primary in 2008 and 2000, and he's John McCain. So there's that.
Apparently, I was originally mistaken about how much ad-money was spent in Iowa. I originally heard that it was $17Million by Romney and about $30Million total. Apparently either I wildly misheard something, or there's a crapload of money out there I can't find documentation of. I'm leaning towards me being wrong.
With that, it was about $17Million
total, and numerically, it was Rick Perry who spent the most money (hence the $480 for every one of his thirteen thousand votes), not Romney, and it didn't work for him. Historically, whoever spends the most wins stuff, but Iowa was completely flipped around in terms of dollars-per-vote, especially with Santorum's breakout near-win.
I said earlier that I was investing a lot of prediction in how Santorum described the likely results in December, that the primary would really be a contest between the different wings of the Republican party (something I've been saying for years). It's not about ideological competition between them, they all mostly adhere to the same general notions of conservatism, so much as competing over who gets to drive. You have the Executives (Gingrich, Huntsmann, Romney), the Culturals (Bachmann, Perry, Santorum), and the Libertarians (Paul).
Especially with Romney being the focal point of the race this whole time, as the guy everyone was competing to prove they could beat, the Cultural wing adopted a lot of support from Republicans in general who didn't want Romney. The real question will be whether the general voting number in each wing will gravitate to one candidate as people peal out of the race. With Bachmann out completely and Perry looking like he'll quit if he doesn't come back strong in South Carolina, it's possible Santorum will pick up their supporters, since he's offering practically the same ideological platform. Certainly anyone who voted or would vote for Bachmann for instance would be much more inclined to Santorum than Romney.
The other question is the money - Santorum achieved a statistical tie with a little over 10% of Romney's money. Then again, Romney barely acknowledged Iowa until right before the end, while Santorum had been living there for almost two months. Within their Cultural league, Bachmann had pocket change while Perry spent piles of cash, mostly direct from his campaign. Obviously, Santorum can't repeat the shoe-string campaign he made in Iowa elsewhere, because there's only so many days in a week for him to live in a state.
So the question becomes, will support aggregate over time? Will his darkhorse near-victory in Iowa give Santorum the recognition and credential he needs to get the attention of Cultural Republican voters in the next few states, and suggest that he's the good bet over Perry? And if that happens, will he gain Perry's money inflow as the would-be Perry supporters move towards him in votes?
The same question is on the Executive side. If Gingrich flames out in a hurry, as he looks likely to do, will his support in votes and money go towards Romney? How much of the Gingrich faction would prefer a Cultural candidate over Romney?
Provided Santorum doesn't completely disappear in the next couple states, certainly if he gets a good showing in South Carolina, this could easily become a two-man race by the end of January as the two major wings of the Republican party line up behind the last choices they've been given. Three-man race if you want to be generous to Ron Paul, who is at least in the running for once, I have to give him credit. I think the real question is what will happen to the money stream, since there's an awful lot of Republicans who would take absolutely anybody over Romney (even a few people in the editorial-column intelligentsia saying they'd rather have four more years to beat up Obama than have a Romney Presidency), while apparently most of the Super PAC money (being mostly business money) is going towards the only Executive who looks like he could win.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 720658 times)