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2012 President

Sabato's Crystal Ball

VIDEO: NOTHING’S EASY FOR ROMNEY

Just how bad were Tuesday night’s primary and caucus results for Mitt Romney? And is Rick Santorum now his top challenger? Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato breaks down Santorum’s unexpected sweep and what it all means in our latest Crystal Ball video. Check it out for a look ahead to the future Republican primary contests and answers to reader questions about Romney’s religion, the future of Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and more.

Larry J. Sabato

The Third Party Illusion

If you’ve been following the political commentary in the national media recently, you’ve probably heard that the 2012 presidential election is likely to result in the largest vote for a third party candidate in many years, perhaps exceeding the 19% of the national popular vote won by Ross Perot in 1992. According to a number of prominent pundits and pollsters, including the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus and Democracy Corps’ Stan Greenberg, Americans are fed up with Democrats and Republicans in Washington and are ready to vote for a centrist alternative. In fact, there’s an organization that hopes to provide Americans with a centrist alternative to the two major party candidates in 2012. It’s called Americans Elect and it has already raised over $20 million (mostly from a few anonymous donors) and is well on its way to securing a place on the ballot in several key states for its presidential candidate — a candidate who is supposed to be chosen not by party bosses or primary voters but by millions of Americans on the Internet. So far no prominent candidates have indicated an interest in seeking the Americans Elect nomination. Some political commentators have even suggested that the entire process

Alan I. Abramowitz

How long is Romney’s road to the nomination?

The moon over Miami was a blue moon for Newt, a bad moon rising for Gingrich. This moon’s shine was all for Mitt Romney, illuminating a moon river that seems set to eventually carry Romney to the Republican presidential nomination. But how fast is “eventually?” In this roller coaster race, no one should pretend to know the end point of the ride. There are some powerful examples of candidates who started losing with some frequency once their nominations seemed all but assured. For example, President Gerald Ford looked like he had vanquished the challenge from Ronald Reagan once he had won the Iowa caucuses and primaries in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Florida and Illinois. Then came March 23 and Reagan’s surprise victory in North Carolina, which started a see-saw battle that led all the way to the floor of the 1976 Kansas City convention. Four years later, President Jimmy Carter thought he had iced Ted Kennedy after winning the Iowa caucuses and then primaries in New Hampshire, Vermont, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Illinois. (In that stretch, the only primary Kennedy won was on March 4 in his home state of Massachusetts.) But on March 25, Kennedy shocked Carter by winning

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Update: Unemployment and the Presidential Race

Back in September, the Crystal Ball examined the possible electoral impact of state-by-state unemployment figures because, after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles (50 states plus Washington, D.C.) With the January jobs report to be released this Friday, we thought we would once again examine the state-by-state numbers, which are shown in Chart 1. Since our analysis of the August numbers, the nation’s unemployment rate has fallen from 9.1% to 8.5% (as of December). Chart 1: State unemployment rates Source: U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics What do these numbers mean for November? In many places, probably not much. Even if California’s unemployment rate remains at around 11%, President Obama will almost certainly carry the state. At the same time, North Dakotans are not planning to reward the president with their three electoral votes despite enjoying the lowest unemployment rate in the country. But the numbers are worth monitoring, especially if the election is close (and we expect it will be). For instance, Nevada is a toss up state that, because of its changing demographics and politics, might be leaning toward President Obama. However, the terrible state of the Silver State’s economy — it has the

Geoffrey Skelley

The Iowa Reversal

Note: This article is cross-posted from Rhodes Cook’s political blog. Up and down and all around the 2012 Republican presidential campaign has gone. It has probably been the craziest nominating race in the last generation. And from this vantage point, the weirdest event of all thus far was the changing outcome in Iowa – from an 8-vote caucus night “victory” for Mitt Romney Jan. 3 to a 34-vote advantage for Rick Santorum more than two weeks later when the vote was finalized. The state party actually threw up its hands at the end and said no winner could be definitively declared since the results from all precincts could not be retrieved. It expressed congratulations to both candidates. In a half century of observing presidential nominating campaigns, I have never seen anything like this. Not just the unusual closeness of the vote, but the inability of the folks counting the votes to determine a true winner. The nebulous result was an embarrassment to the Iowa caucuses in general and the Republican Party of Iowa in particular. Besides that, several other points stand out. First, the Iowa situation was not fair to Santorum. Rather than coming into New Hampshire off an apparent

Rhodes Cook

THE REPUBLICANS’ ELECTORAL COLLEGE NEWT-MARE

What can we expect from the Florida primary? What are the possible repercussions of a Gingrich victory versus those of a Romney win in the Sunshine State? Check out our latest Crystal Ball video by clicking on the picture. Below, we examine the Republican electoral situation and what a Gingrich candidacy might mean: In the aftermath of voting in the deeply conservative South Carolina primary, one voter quoted by The Washington Post seemed to summarize what Republicans there were looking for in a candidate: Many voters said they liked the scrap in the former House speaker’s personality — his willingness to seek confrontations with his GOP rivals and the news media. That, they said, was what the GOP would need in the race against President Obama this fall. “I think Mitt Romney is a good man,” said Harold Wade, 85, leaving a polling place in this picturesque seaside suburb outside Charleston. “But I think we’ve reached a point where we need someone who’s mean.” And Gingrich, he said, was the only one mean enough. Republicans don’t just disagree with President Barack Obama; they viscerally dislike him. And, as Mr. Wade indicates, they don’t just want a candidate who can beat

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Do Endorsements Matter?

Note: This article originally appeared in the Jan. 24 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Do endorsements matter? Politicians certainly think so, and they spend loads of time courting party elites and opinion-makers. So far, though, 2012 has shown how the politics of anointment and appointment can fail. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley flopped mightily in trying to deliver her state for Mitt Romney. Evangelical leaders held a summit to get the Palmetto State to back their new choice, Rick Santorum, but he fared much worse than Romney. Newt Gingrich knows the feeling — New Hampshire’s supposedly dominant Union Leader newspaper huffed and puffed for Newt and got him less than 10% of the vote. But it’s easy to cherry-pick examples to prove the folly of endorsements. In some circumstances, they can make a substantial difference. Throughout American history, presidencies have been created by the laying on of incumbent hands. Thomas Jefferson effectively passed the presidency to his friend and confidant, James Madison. Andrew Jackson handed his populist democracy off to an unlikely dandy, Martin Van Buren, in 1836. Few would have imagined the studious and portly William Howard Taft as president until Theodore Roosevelt picked him in 1908. More

Larry J. Sabato

Romney’s coronation: Just delayed, or gone awry?

This much is obvious: South Carolina has proven to be a disaster for Mitt Romney. The size of his defeat by Newt Gingrich — a 12%+ landslide in a four-way race — is virtually a repudiation of his candidacy in a state that has prided itself on picking the eventual nominee for 32 years. And we suspect Romney will have several more nights of heartburn, much like this one, as the nomination process unfolds. The surprise for some may be that Mitt Romney remains a strong, though no longer prohibitive, favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. He continues to benefit from an unorganized, inadequately funded, polarizing opposition. The weak Republican field has aided Romney from the start. Still, if there is another South Carolina-style collapse in Florida for Romney, it will have devastating consequences for the frontrunner — and may even bring calls for a new candidate to enter the race. The pressure is on for Romney in the Sunshine State. Concerning South Carolina, one has to give Gingrich credit for remarkable resiliency. He has risen from the dead not once but twice in this campaign: First, after his campaign imploded in the middle of last year and now, after

Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik

Romney’s Opponents Look for the Spirit of ‘76

While Mitt Romney may very well be on his way to winning the GOP nomination, he is not completely out of the woods yet. With so many primaries and caucuses left to be decided, it is perfectly possible that other candidates will win some of the remaining states as long as they stay in the race. We only have to look at the party nomination struggles in 1976 to see how frontrunners who started fast ended up facing long, hard slogs to the nomination. In 1976 President Gerald Ford faced off in a head-to-head matchup against conservative standard-bearer Ronald Reagan in the Republican field. The incumbent galloped out to a large early lead by winning Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Florida and Illinois. However, beginning in North Carolina on March 23, Ronald Reagan began winning many states in the South and Midwest. In the end, neither candidate had a clear majority of delegates when they arrived at the Republican convention in Kansas City. Only deference to the sitting (if unelected) president by enough uncommitted delegates allowed Gerald Ford to defeat Reagan for the nomination by a narrow margin. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Jimmy Carter seemed to be gaining the

Geoffrey Skelley

TEN DAYS TO STOP ROMNEY

Is Mitt Romney unstoppable? Will South Carolina risk its perfect primary record to back someone else? And will Ron Paul go all the way to the convention? Get our take — and answers to your Twitter questions — in our latest Crystal Ball video. Analysis of New Hampshire and a look ahead to South Carolina continues below: Could Mitt Romney have scripted a better opening to campaign 2012? First, he squeaked to victory by eight votes in Iowa — or so the preliminary tally would suggest. Then he managed to meet expectations in New Hampshire with 39.3% and secured his preferred second place finisher, Ron Paul (23%). His main challenger in Iowa, Rick Santorum, finished far back at 9.4%. Most pleasing to Romney was the relatively weak third place showing of Jon Huntsman (17%), whose relations with Romney have been increasingly frosty. The Huntsman result was perhaps the most surprising, because the news media had covered him extensively and declared him to be the hot candidate with momentum. But in the end, it turned out that he mainly attracted independents and some Democrats. Remarkably, among actual Republicans voting in the Granite State, Huntsman finished in last place among the major

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics

Modern Cabinets: No “Team of Rivals” With Mitt Romney leading in the Republican nomination battle, there has been talk of what kind of roles the other GOP candidates might occupy in a hypothetical Romney administration. Naturally, the first position discussed is vice president, but there has also been talk of Cabinet appointments, and it is certainly possible that some of Romney’s foes would make plausible candidates. However, recent history tells us that incoming presidents do not typically appoint their former rivals for the nomination. Many incoming presidents have surely reacted skeptically to the idea of bringing in individuals who had so recently opposed them; perhaps they even responded as Barbara Walters did when she heard Herman Cain state that he would hypothetically be open to taking the secretary of defense position. If we look at presidential Cabinets from 1960 to now, we found only four Cabinet appointments by incoming presidents that came from the intraparty competition. First, in 1968, George Romney (Mitt’s father) ran an abortive campaign for the GOP nomination, and ended up becoming Richard Nixon’s first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Nixon also appointed Massachusetts Gov. John A. Volpe as transportation secretary, but Volpe’s presidential campaign

UVA Center for Politics

On to New Hampshire

What a night! Tuesday night’s Iowa caucuses got the Republican primary season off to a rousing start, with Mitt Romney winning the narrowest of victories over Rick Santorum. What do the Iowa results mean, and what should we expect in New Hampshire? Check out our first-ever Crystal Ball video to get our take. And with next week’s New Hampshire primary looming, we’ll be back next week with another video. Remember to tweet us your questions next Tuesday — and, to the many who tweeted @LarrySabato on caucus night, check out the video to see if your question was selected: Surprisingly, an eight-vote victory is not the most closely contested presidential nominating contest in recent memory — Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by a mere seven votes in the Guam caucuses in 2008. And there have been many other close calls over the years. There are three big winners from the Iowa caucuses. The first, and most important, is Mitt Romney, who was lucky enough to get two finalists he is very likely to beat. The second big winner is Rick Santorum, who could have easily been left for dead in the cornfields of Iowa but instead has at least a

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Some close primary and caucus results from the past

With tonight’s agonizingly close race in the Iowa caucuses, we decided to look back at other close primary calls through the years: 1972 Dems: May 2, Ohio – Humphrey 41.2, McGovern 39.6. 1976 Dems: April 6, Wisconsin – Carter 36.6, Udall 35.6; May 11, Nebraska – Church 38.5, Carter 37.6; May 18, Michigan – Carter 43.4, Udall 43.1. GOP: Jan 19, Iowa – Ford 45, Reagan 43; March 2, New Hampshire – Ford 49.4, Reagan 48. 1980 GOP: March 4, Massachusetts – Bush 31, Anderson 30.7, Reagan 28.8; March 4, Vermont – Reagan 30.1, Anderson 29. Dems: April 22, Pennsylvania – Kennedy 45.7, Carter 45.4. 1984 Dems: May 8, Indiana – Hart 41.8, Mondale 40.9; May 8, Hart 42, Mondale 40.3 1988 GOP: March 8, Missouri – Bush 42.2, Dole 41.1. Dems: March 8, North Carolina – Gore 34.7, Jackson 33. 1992 Dems: March 3, Colorado – Brown 28.8, Clinton 26.9, Tsongas 25.6; March 24, Connecticut – Brown 37.2, Clinton 35.6; April 7, Minnesota – Clinton 31.1, Brown 30.6. 1996 GOP: Feb 20, New Hampshire – Buchanan 27.2, Dole 26.2. 2004 Dems: Feb 3, Oklahoma – Clark 29.9, Edwards 29.5, Kerry 26.8. 2008 GOP: Feb 5, Missouri – McCain 33,

Geoffrey Skelley

FIVE DAYS TO IOWA

With the Iowa caucuses only five days away, we at the Crystal Ball wanted to suggest some possible electoral scenarios that could play out next Tuesday and beyond. Because we love history, and because the past is often prologue, each scenario has some historical precedent: Scenario 1: Win in Iowa starts frontrunner on path to nomination In this case, Mitt Romney pulls off a victory in Iowa that catapults him well ahead of the field. With New Hampshire acting as his “firewall” in the competition for the GOP nomination, Romney should be able to grab a victory in the Jan. 10 primary. With two wins in the first two states, Romney would be well-positioned to utilize his financial and organizational advantages in much of the country — not to mention help from the press in anointing him as an inevitable nominee — to move inexorably toward the Republican crown, perhaps quickly, despite the elongated nomination calendar. The 2004 battle for the Democratic nomination provides precedent for such a plot line. At the beginning of January that year, John Kerry trailed Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt in Iowa polling. But by the time the caucuses took place on Jan. 19, Kerry

Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley

Notes on the State of Politics

Ben Nelson and the Senate calculus Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) decision to retire makes a Republican takeover of the Senate a little more likely, but just a little more. It does not dramatically change the Senate landscape. Why? Because Nelson could easily have lost if he ran again. Still, out of deference to the powers of incumbency, we had previously kept Nebraska as a toss up. Now that Nelson has retired, we have switched our rating in this race to LIKELY REPUBLICAN, and that could become “safe” eventually. It appears that the only big-name Democrat who could make this a race is former Sen. Bob Kerrey, but we’ll be surprised if he runs. Apparently, the remaining Democratic bench consists of various mayors and state legislators who would have a steep uphill climb to victory. In any event, the Republican nominee for president is likely to get 60% or more of the vote in Nebraska, which will make it very difficult for the Democratic candidate. This is a polarized, highly partisan era, very different than the one that nurtured such Nebraska Democratic U.S. senators as Kerrey, Nelson, Jim Exon and Ed Zorinsky. In 2000 Nelson won a Senate squeaker despite George

UVA Center for Politics