Monday, January 21, 2008

Early Florida thoughts

Monday, January 21, 2008 | Posted by Fredo | | Edit Post
Mitt's "pull out to NV" was largely spin (e.g., he still spent more than any other candidate on advertising to come in 4th behind Thompson, in a state where he briefly held the lead in the RCP poll average as recently as Nov), but he made hay out of the spin, and now finds himself in a good position. Make no mistake, Mitt holds the cards in FL at this point.

McCain and Rudy are likley to split from the same set of voters in FL, and neither will have the advertising budget Mitt will. McCain is continuing to consolidate support, with the highest national lead he's shown in the Ras. tracking poll since I don't know when, probably early '07. If you look at the larger trend in the naitonal polls since NH, McCain has risen, Mitt has stayed constant, Rudy and Fred stayed constant and low, and Huck fell off after SC with his support mostly going to McCain.

McCain probably needs Huck to maintain viability, as he will be counting on Huck to siphon off SoCon votes from Romney in Florida if he's going to win.

So much of the interesting stuff has yet to play out. For instance, who targets who? Will Rudy dedicate his budget to trashing Mitt, the candidate standing in his way as the executive experience/FiCon candidate? Or will Rudy decide he's going to focus his fire on McCain, who is his chief competitor in the states where he needs to do well (CA/NY/NJ)?

Does Huck focus on Romney because Huck still has an intrinsic advantage with Southern SoCon voters? Meanwhile, if Florida voters decide that the race is, in fact, a McCain-Romney matchup, Mitt's in the driver seat as the more conservative of the two.

Meanwhile, FL is now a necessity for Rudy, with him running behind McCain even in his home base region (NJ and NY polls both show him trailing McCain significantly). Rudy will probably focus his fire on McCain and try to knock him down a peg, figuring if he loses FL he could still have a play in NY.

Basically, the race right now consists of McCain trying to woo Rudy supporters and Mitt trying to woo Huck supporters, and Huck is more wounded at this point than Rudy. Advantage Mitt.

4 comments:

SheaHeyKid said...

Excellent analysis. Rudy's biggest challenge is trying to overcome the impact of momentum (directly a result of his campaign strategy) suggesting that he is out of it. My opinion is that Rudy will try to make the following argument. 1) The early primary/caucus results to date are meaningless since the total # of delegates awarded so far is low. 2) Whoever racks up most wins on Super Tuesday takes a commanding lead. 3) Therefore, (in an appeal to his original supporters in FL, CA, NY, NJ) ignore the fact that Rudy has fallen behind and McCain is the apparent leader, and simply vote for Rudy as they initially planned to. My guess is he attacks McCain most directly, and Mitt secondarily, since McCain is not only leading polls in those states but also nationally now, so he is the main obstacle to Rudy.

It will be interesting to see how FL and other states play out. For example, will McCain, Mitt, and Rudy split so many votes in FL that Huck wins? Or will Huck and Mitt split votes allowing McCain to win? A win by Mitt in FL would be extremely decisive for him, especially with McCain and Rudy considered the long-time front-runners there.

The more I listen to Mitt the more I think he is exactly what the country needs now, especially if we are heading into a slowdown. When Fred drops out I would like to see him endorse Mitt, I think even a pickup of those 3-5% would put him over the top. In fact, it would be nice to see that happen a few days before Super Tuesday.

1/21/2008 3:45 PM
SheaHeyKid said...

BTW, hereis the Rasmussen poll with Mitt taking a 5 point lead.

Interesting data in the splits if you read through it, but here is something promising for Mitt. Even though Romney is only third when ranking how certain his supporters will vote for him, he is #1 (albeit by one point over Rudy) among all voters who say they are certain how they will vote.

Clearly, with Fred sitting on 12%, he would make an enormous difference if he drops out and endorses one of the remaining 4.

1/21/2008 3:51 PM
Fredo said...

With less than 7% of the delegates having been awarded at this point, it's still wide open.

It's fascinating to realize that:

1) NY (Winner take all) will be awarding more delegates (101) to its winner on 2/5 than any of the candidates have accumulated to this point.

2) Just a total flyer--but a candidate could still jump in this race after 2/5 if its still fractured. If it's clear the thing is headed to a brokered convention, all the more reason to jump in late, not worry about getting a majority of delegates and just try to become the man of moment, a la Bobby Kennedy in '68.

Then you could go into the convention saying "I've won the most recent contests, and consolidated support where none of the other candidates were able to do so."

Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney are the only figures I can think of that could throw around enough weight, right out of the box, to make such a strategy plausible. Any others?

1/21/2008 3:59 PM
Fredo said...

I'm not convinced the endorsement would matter that much for McCain, even if Fred does endorse him (as has been speculated).

I think's Fred's supporters are more natural allies, ideologically speaking, of Mitt.

Of course, style wise maybe they'd take the down-to-earth Arizonan over the slick-talking ivy leaguer.

My guess is that support goes 5% to Mitt, 3% McCain, and 2% Huck, and 2% Rudy.

1/21/2008 4:01 PM
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Always sniffing for the truth

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