Terry Mitchell

Analysis of the 2012 South Carolina GOP Primary



Posted: Saturday, January 21, 2012

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

Newt Gingrich capped his comeback that began earlier in the week and used his momentum to get the win that he needed to get back in the race. And it wasn’t just a victory – it was a 12-percentage-point shellacking of Mitt Romney, who had led in the polls in South Carolina by double digits last weekend. This should easily keep Gingrich's momentum going as the race now heads into Florida. Don’t be surprised if Gingrich shoots to the top or near the top of the Florida polls within the next several days. His win is a true game changer, as a Romney win would have essentially wrapped up the nomination for him after just three contests. Now it’s going to be a much longer race that will likely go on at least through April, even if Romney wins Florida. This is the first time in history that we have had three different winners in the first three GOP nominating contests. It is also unprecedented for someone to finish out of the top three in both Iowa and New Hampshire and then come back to win South Carolina.

Mitt Romney’s loss still leaves him in the role of the frontrunner for the nomination, but now his path is going to be much longer and harder. He has, at least temporarily, lost his air of inevitability. Although he is still the favorite to win the nomination, he is not a prohibitive favorite anymore. He will need to win Florida to quickly re-establish his dominance in the race. It he doesn’t, he would completely lose his frontrunner's mantle, and the race could turn into a true free-for-all, despite all of his advantages in money and organization. Look for him to come out swinging and be very aggressive in Florida, especially in the two debates, as he was too passive during those in South Carolina. In addition, he might want to be more forthcoming about his tax situation, as that proved to be one of his downfalls in South Carolina. Also, expect him to turn up the heat on Gingrich in an effort to paint him as unelectable. For now, he can no longer act has if he is already the nominee and focus on President Obama. He must first battle Gingrich in what could be a drawn out fight for the nomination.

Although the Gingrich victory keeps Rick Santorum alive in the race, it’s hard to see a path forward for him after his distant third place finish. Neither his endorsement by that group of evangelical leaders nor his belated win in Iowa seemed to give him much of a bump in South Carolina, although he did perform a little better than the polls had indicated. And he did avoid finishing fourth behind Ron Paul, which would have been disastrous. Santorum insists that he’s in for the long haul, but he may just be waiting to see how well he does in the Florida polls over the next few days. With fewer evangelical voters, Florida wouldn’t seem to be as good a state for him as South Carolina, so he might have trouble breaking out of single digits there. If he sees that this is likely to happen, he might make the same decision that Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry made in South Carolina – to pull out before being embarrassed in the primary. Then again, he might actually be in long term, to be in a position to benefit in case Gingrich implodes somewhere along the way.

Ron Paul didn’t put much emphasis on South Carolina, nor did he spend much time there, so a fourth place finish wasn’t a big surprise. However, he more than tripled the percentage of the vote he got there four years ago (13% vs. 4%). Except for the debates, Paul will likely skip Florida as well, since it is a winner-take-all state where no one but the winner gets any delegates. He will instead  cherry-pick some of the smaller upcoming caucus states, where his organizational ability can help him accumulate delegates that are awarded proportionally.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Christofer French
 124 days 6 hours ago.
74 fans.
Good job. Thanks for the reporting.
» left by Terry Mitchell 123 days 12 hours ago.
93 fans.
Christofer, thanks for reading and commenting. I'm glad to keep everyone informed.
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