It would be more meaning full if the percentage of the win is posted in the chart.

I know this is a faint hope, but why can’t we have all the primaries on the same day and remove the unfair advantage from the first 3 primaries? Iowa and New Hampshire are not particularly conservative states which may explain why we end up with RINOs like McCain and Romney.

Just curious. It seems to me this is the weakest year for the early contests. The first three are not winner-take-all, and Florida has half the delegates.

if he is the nominee. As long as we keep the House Obama cannot do a lot of damage.

heck I will gladly stay home and wait for Romney to be crushed, ha! ha!

sugar maple tree. I am going to miss his antics this winter.

First time I have ever sat here and seen that disturb my backyard landscape. 8:15 – 8:24 am on the day of New Hampshire’s primary. Ok, I am in the bit of Massachusetts just south of New Hampshire, but, made me think of the parable.

I like squirrels – even if they do redesign your garden.
I lost any illusion about foxes after they used my yard for kit training in summer 2010. Real foxes do NOT sound like George Clooney altho I loved the “Fabulaous Mr. Fox”

Made me think of Perry’s ad with the cartoon fox guarding the henhouse.

Everything is against the law in Massachusetts, especially shooting a fox in your neighbor’s backyard, even if the fox is savagely eating a gray squirrel.

Ok, just had to tell this story, because it made me think about New Hampshire’s vote today (Dixville Notch was inconclusive)

and I like to think it meant Newt will eat the squirrelly guy today, so thattop three are Romney, Huntsman, and Gingrich. and since someone last night on CNN was saying Romney had to get above 30%, I think that means Romney will be limping out of NH, because I think Romney has to get above 35% to meet expectations, and the spin was alreadyto lower that %.

As to Leon’s analysis of the meaning of Iowa and NH, it used to mean the media gave momentum to only the top three. I find it difficult to find anyone thinking 2012 is PREDICTABLE.

btw, yesterday, C-Span2 had a really interesting presentation w/ Q&A by Sean Trende of RCP at the AEI on electoral coalitions and the dynamics for 2012 . The Q&A really got into Obama and the Democrats vulnerability for 2012.
I highly recommend it. Trende said as little as possible about Luap Nor, because he did not want his emailbox flooded with thousands of nasty messages. I keep hearing and reading that everywhere.

I would not assign any real predictive value to Iowa or New Hampshire, whereas South Carolina and Florida will cull the field.

They frequently lead to questionable conclusions.

Basing a conclusion that a candidate MUST win either Iowa or NH on five examples over 30 years is roughly analogous to concluding that adopting the nick-name “Yankees” or “Cardinals” is the only path to winning ten or more World Series.

Winners win. Strong candidates win. Thus it reasonably follows that the ultimate candidate could be expected to win Iowa and or NH. The real nut of the problem is to what degree is the winner winning, symptomatic vs causal.

This cycle is markedly different from most others. Discounting the years were an incumbent president was running (and 1968 which is incomplete and too far back to be relevant) we see five contests of a very different make-up than 2012.

1980 – Reagan was the clear favorite from the get go but his team misjudged Iowa and George Bush. After that embarrassment they got their act together and easily won the nomination.

1988 – Here you had the Veep vs a powerful Senator, not surprising that they overshadowed the rest of the field and split the first two contests.

1996 – What a depressing year that was. Again Dole was set up as next in line, was Majority Leader and there really was never much doubt about this one.

2000 – GWB had a huge war chest, the family name and was generally viewed as inevitable

2008 – This is the best comparison to 2012 but even so McCain was a stronger candidate than Romney in the primaries (obviously since McCain won) in terms of electoral accomplishment and how he was viewed by Republicans.

In a contest as organic as the this one, it is plausible to suspect that the mold may well be broken this time around.

Is the person the eventual nominee because of the predictive power of these early state results, or perhaps due to the early state results?

I think we need to look a little harder at this to make sure it’s not a ‘self-fulfilling prophesy’ type of deal. I’ll go ahead and state my hypothesis: Select any two states at random and place them up front in the same manner as IA and NH and I’d expect over time, they will be just as ‘predictive’ as IA and NH are now.

By the time my state typically has its primary, I can usually either vote for the “eventual” nominee or vote for the one person who still has an outside chance — neither of which usually is the best choice.

In regards to this election, I still see a lot of ‘not-Romney’ votes, but they are spread out in such a way that Romney will obtain the plurality needed to win states and the eventual nomination. i.e. The majority may not want Romney, but will end up stuck with him as the nominee…

Is that you don’t have to win both Iowa and New Hampshire to win the nomination, but you pretty much have to win ONE of them.

That is not good news.

But they need to be one on one and that is the problem, I dont see that happening.

So take these first 4 states, being proportional, that makes things somewhat close AND you have a month then from these January contests then things really heat up in March with Super Tuesday.

The question isnt who is going to win these four, it could very well be Romney, which is fine, but if the field doesnt dwindle after the four January contests then March is just going to be much of the same. If the field narrows and you get some one on one debates then January was just a warm up and cut the field exercise.

But here is the issue, nobody is getting out:
1. Rick Santorum – Basically put an all-Iowa strategy in place, it paid off in the sense that he “tied” for the win in Iowa, but that really means nothing moving forward as a national primary candidate. He played social issues and retail politics in state that it works, got a big late endorsement from VanderPlaats and wasnt vetted much because it was such a late surge. Problem is that the Iowa “win” will keep him from dropping out. Seriously, what is the earliest someone who has won Iowa has ever dropped out of the race? He isnt going anywhere.

2. Newt Gingrich – seems to have a strong 10-15% base in every state and lets face it, his ego and the fact he is now flush with money, he isnt going anywhere. I think he raised $10 Million in the last quarter for his campaign and his PAC just got the 3.5 Million money bomb from his casino buddy. He is going nowhere.

3. Rick Perry – thought maybe he was going to drop out, but hung around. Further helping his old buddy Willard. But since he is a red state visitor and reads the message board here, he probably thinks he is prime for a surge, he doesnt appear to be going anywhere.

4. John Huntsman – in some ways also a not-Romney candidate, probably pulls a little more from Gingrich than Perry or Santorum, maybe a little Paul too, but he has the money to hang around, especially if he has a good showing in NH.

So thats the problem, none of these guys are going anywhere, which will give the impression of Mitt vs. the Field, the field cant unify and Mitt will appear inevitable, keep picking up endorsements, etc…unless it gets one on one, its over.

I am glad you put that statistic up. I was watching Fox the other day and they were saying that SC is not known for picking candidate who were not in the top 3 in either NH or Iowa.

So yes its very important for either Newt, Perry, or Santorum to get the #3 spot today. I will almost bet if Santorum does really bad the headlines will call his Iowa placing a fluke.

Except through hindsight.

The fact that certain things in politics has not happened does not mean that they will not happen. With a $3.4 million advertising buy and a $5 million contribution, South Carolina has become a must win state for Gingrich.

If he doesn’t win here, with that kind of messaging potential, he can’t win anywhere. But he can keep running and picking up proportional delegates through March, which will give him clout at the convention.

A Romney/Gingrich ticket makes a lot more sense than McCain/Palen.