2012 Convention Exposes Corruption of GOP, Romney Campaign

Found in the backpages of the mainstream press, a profound act of blatant tyranny in our elections occurred yesterday at the Republican National Convention. My goal is to explain the event using a simple analogy the complex corruption miring the hands of both the GOP and the Romney campaign.

Imagine if you will for a moment a NCAA football team trying to qualify for a bowl game. Let's furthermore pretend that the rules say that in order to qualify to play in a bowl game, you must have at least 5 wins. Your team works extra hard against pundits who claimed your team was so bad you wouldn't even win 1 game. Some of the games played--most notably one game played in Maine, but others as well--you were clearly the winner but the NCAA told you you lost the game because they didn't like the outcome. The NCAA's decision so outraged the Governor of Maine, he actually boycotted the games despite personal invitation to attend.

And all this notwithstanding, by some miracle grace of God your team wins SIX games! It serves as an amazing victory for the team and reason for celebration. Yet just in the act of winning the last win at the completion of the season, the NCAA votes to up the ante to EIGHT games in order to qualify. Thus has been the treatment yesterday at the convention with those within the GOP who support nominating at the convention someone other than Mitt Romney. Here is evidence of the 225 votes cast at the RNC yesterday for someone other than Romney: video tally count

The problem facing the GOP is not only is this corrupt, but illegal. While the GOP is a private organization, it received $18 Million in taxpayer funds for the purpose of holding a fair convention. Changing the rules at the final moment from 5 states to 8 states is antithetical to the democratic process and should disqualify the GOP from being considered a venue promoting fair, democratic process. Just as the birth certificate issue clouded the validity of Obama's election in the minds of many, the abrupt rule change now clouds the Romney victory. That is, how can Romney legitimately now claim to be the GOP nominee when the rules were changed at the last minute to disallow the nomination of another candidate at convention?  Would we allow a last minute change in the voting process?  What if we changed election rules at the last minute in 2000 and tell Bush that we were no longer counting electoral college but popular vote?  The nation would be in outrage.

 In an article of interest, US News quoted one of the Maine delegates as saying:

"We would have probably stood in line and voted for Romney in November, but not if he's going to do this for us," he says. "Not if he's going to disenfranchise the voters of the state of Maine. If you're going to do that, I will not stand with this party. This is ridiculous. These people were elected by the state and they're not allowed to be on the floor."

This video highlights the contention, including the shouts to seat the Maine delegation.  Does the Romney campaign and Mitt Romney himself really believe that using the tyranny of the majority to squelch dissent and disenfranchisement is the means to victory?  Can there be freedom or Constitutional government when the rights of the minority are disrupted?

Romney has been negligent in standing for freedom. Most likely through his heavy-handed campaign, he has been complicit in the disenfranchisement of the non-Romney delegates, although when questioned by Fox News' Ben Swann, he claimed ignorance. Ignorance-at-best is hardly a trait we can afford from a country quagmired in debt and a far cry from the leadership Romney professes.

Both the RNC and candidate Romney have lost the moral highground. There can be no long-term victory for them when this happens. Indeed it reminisces of the salt works scene from the movie Ghandi. The beating of those in favor of someone besides Romney has gone on and on. The bodies of the wounded have been carried off and whatever moral ascendancy the GOP held was lost today.  The tyranny at the GOP convention yesterday will be remembered always.

Gingrich Surging in South Carolina

Nate Silver unequivocally answers a question he posed yesterday--does Newt Gingrich have momentum in South Carolina?--in his FiveThirtyEight blog post today: "Yes, Mr. Gingrich does have momentum — and a lot of it." He writes, "Six different South Carolina polls have been released so far today, and they show a split in their results." Three of them, automated polls by Rasmussen Reports, Public Policy Polling and InsiderAdvantage, "have Mr. Gingrich in the lead...by margins ranging from 2 points to 6 points."

The polls strongly indicate that Mr. Gingrich's performance at the Monday debate has contributed to his rise in the polls. Marist for NBC News, one of the more traditional polls conducted by live interviewers, "showed Mitt Romney leading by 10 percentage points." But when Marist "split its results," it appeared that the debate did indeed give Mr. Gingrich some momentum with South Carolina voters. Mr. Silver writes, "Mr. Romney’s lead was smaller — 5 points — in the post-debate sample." Further, the aforementioned automated polls that show Mr. Gingrich in the lead "were conducted on Wednesday, after the debate and the qualified endorsement Mr. Gingrich received from Sarah Palin."

The FiveThirtyEight forecast model suggests that Mr. Gingrich is, in fact, gaining significant momentum. According to Mr. Silver, "The model now shows a virtual tie in the race, with Mr. Gingrich projected to get 34 percent of the vote and Mr. Romney 33.6 percent and each candidate having about a 50 percent chance of winning."

Most of Mr. Gingrich's gain, however, does not appear to be connected to a drop in the polls for Mr. Romney. Mr. Silver notes, "Mr. Gingrich has gained ground in the polls more than Mr. Romney has lost it. Two days ago, our forecast had Mr. Gingrich with 22.6 percent of the vote, so he has gained about 11 points since then. Meanwhile, Mr. Romney’s projection has declined less than 3 points — to 33.6 percent from 36.1 percent — over the same interval."

So where is Mr. Gingrich getting his new projected votes? According to Mr. Silver, "Mr. Gingrich’s gains have come from Rick Santorum and Rick Perry (who dropped out of the race today and endorsed Mr. Gingrich), as well as from undecided voters." Mr. Silver does go on to acknowledge that automated polls, because they usually do not call cell phones and "also generally have lower response rates than traditional polls," may not be the best source.

For now, Mr. Silver anticipates that the Saturday primary could yield a number of different results. He writes: "Our research shows that high levels of volatility and disagreement in the polls make polling aggregation methods less reliable. In other words, the margin of error on the forecast is especially high, enough so that either Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich could emerge with a clear victory by the time that the vote takes place on Saturday."

Early Polls Show Romney's Lead in South Carolina Shrinking

Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog writes that the first South Carolina GOP primary poll contradicts his earlier prediction that Mitt Romney would increase "his modest lead in the South Carolina polls once his victory in New Hampshire was reflected in the surveys there." Instead, the poll, an automated survey from InsiderAdvantage, "shows Mr. Romney’s lead contracting in South Carolina," though Silver "urge[s] a lot of caution in interpreting it."

The poll "was conducted on Wednesday and shows Mr. Romney with 23 percent of the vote, just 2 points ahead of Newt Gingrich at 21 percent. The poll has Rick Santorum and Ron Paul tied for third place at 13 percent, with Jon M. Huntsman Jr. having moved ahead of Rick Perry for fifth place."

But Silver is not completely sold on InsiderAdvantage. He writes, "InsiderAdvantage has a mixed track record and rates fairly poorly in the FiveThrityEight pollster ratings, which is one reason to interpret these numbers with some care. In addition, Matt Towery, the head of InsiderAdvantage, formerly served as the head of Mr. Gingrich’s political organization from 1992 until Mr. Gingrich left Congress."

Silver does note, however, that "another polling firm that rates more highly, Public Policy Polling, said in a series of Twitter messages that it has also detected a tight race between Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich in South Carolina, with little evidence of favorable momentum for Mr. Romney following his New Hampshire victory."

Negative early news for Romney in South Carolina is partially offset by early polling in Florida, however. Silver writes: "Confusing matters further is that a poll of Florida, from Rasmussen Reports, did show some gains for Mr. Romney. The poll, conducted on Wednesday, showed Mr. Romney with 41 percent of the vote there, better than he has done in any prior survey of the state. The poll also showed Mr. Gingrich’s numbers on the decline." Silver predicts that "if the initial results from South Carolina and Florida are confirmed by other pollsters, they would suggest that Florida could play a backstop role for Mr. Romney, in somewhat the same way that New Hampshire did for him relative to Iowa."

However, at this stage Silver suggests that we wait before attaching much weight to the early poll results from either South Carolina or Florida. 

Obama Starts New Year with 46% Job Approval

Gallup polling in early January finds that President Obama's job approval rating is at 46 percent, an improvement over most data since August 2011, when his approval typically scored in the low 40 percent range. Obama recorded "monthly approval averages of 41% in August, September, and October, and 43% in November and December." According to Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones, "The current 46% rating for Obama, based on Jan. 2-4 polling, is one percentage point below his recent high three-day averages of 47% in Dec. 29-Jan. 3 and Dec. 21-23 tracking." The rating is still lower than last January, however, when Obama averaged 49 percent approval over the month.

Jones writes, "Obama's approval rating will be a critical indicator of his re-election chances this year. If he can sustain higher approval ratings through early November, his odds of winning a second term will increase." Historical data has shown "that all presidents since Eisenhower with approval ratings above 50% have won re-election easily." More recently, "George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 with 48% approval at the time of the election." But Obama would not have to fall very far for Jones to anticipate trouble: "If Obama's approval rating reverts to the low 40% range, he would have a difficult time defeating a Republican in a two-candidate race."

Jones identifies independents as a key group Obama must target if he hopes to increase his approval rating. "Currently, 81% of Democrats, 42% of independents, and 10% of Republicans approve of Obama. By comparison, last January, when he had an overall monthly average of 49%, Obama's approval rating was 83% among Democrats, 47% among independents, and 13% among Republicans."

One potential reason for the modest uptick in Obama's rating this month "could be the improvement in Americans' economic confidence in recent days." But Jones says " it is unclear whether that will last." Further, "January brings challenges for Obama to maintain higher approval ratings, given that much of the political focus will be on the Republican nomination contest, with the GOP candidates seeking to point out Obama's shortcomings as president in order to help their chances of winning the nomination."

Obama does, however, have the State of the Union address January 24, which according to Jones presents "a unique opportunity for him to directly state his case for re-election to Americans."

Mormon Republicans Loyal to Romney; Atheist Republicans Disproportionately Go For Paul

According to Gallup, Republican and Republican-leaners of voting age who identify as Mormon are disproportionately likely to support Mitt Romney, while Ron Paul garners more support among atheist Republicans than he does among Republicans of all religious denominations. Romney collects 71 percent of the Mormon Republican vote, exceeding the 23 percent he scores among all Republicans, and Paul garners 19 percent of the atheist vote, more than the 10 percent of all Republicans who support him. Gallup surmises that Paul's support among atheist Republicans at least partly reflects "the youthful skew in Paul's support and the tendency for young Americans to have no formal religious identity."

But Republican voters do not always support the candidate who shares their religious denomination: "Catholic Republicans were no more likely than average to support the two Catholics in the GOP race, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum; Protestant Republicans did not disproportionately support any particular candidate." 26 percent of Republicans who identify as Catholic support Gingrich, less than the 28 percent of all Republicans who support him. And four percent support Santorum, only slightly more than the three percent of all Republicans who support him.

Similar to Catholic Republicans, Protestant Republicans "reflect the overall sample average in their candidate support." The three major Protestant candidates are Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann (who has just suspended her campaign). Paul only gets 10 percent of the Protestant vote, which matches his score among all Republicans; Perry gets eight percent of the Protestant vote, only one more percentage point than his support among all Republicans; and Bachmann scores seven percent of the Protestant vote, just surpassing the six percent of all Republicans who support her.

Although Romney attracts the vast majority of the Mormon Republican vote, Mormons represent a relatively small percentage of the voting population. Gallup writes: "Given that Mormons constitute about 2% of American adults and 4% of Republicans nationally, the more important factor may be any possible effect that Romney's faith has on the vote of highly religious non-Mormons, a much larger voting bloc. The current data show that highly religious Protestants do give Romney slightly lower support than he gets among all Republicans, although the five-point difference is not huge."

FiveThirtyEight: Gingrich Leads Five Plausible GOP Candidates in Iowa

In a recent FiveThirtyEight blog post, Nate Silver shared a preview of his polling-based forecasts for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the official versions of which he plans to release in a few days. The statistical analysis is based on state-by-state polling; Silver writes that although more objective and subjective factors could be taken into account, "building a well-calibrated forecast from the polls is challenging enough given the uncertainties inherent in primary polling, and so that’s what we’ve decided to focus on rather than anything fancier."

The polling-based analysis for Iowa has Newt Gingrich projected to win 25.1% of the vote, followed by Ron Paul, with 20.7%; Mitt Romney (15.6%); Rick Perry (12.3%); and Michele Bachmann (11.4%); and both Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman Jr., who are projected to garner under 10 percent of the vote. In his blog post, Silver explains the three factors used to calculate the projections: a weighted polling average, which emphasizes more recent polling as being a better predictor of probable primary results; the reallocated average, "which takes undecided voters and allocates them among the viable candidates;" and a process Silver calls momentum, which "looks at the near-term trend in a candidate’s polling and assigns a small bonus or penalty based upon it."

Silver warns, however, that these projections "are not very precise, because primary polling is not very precise." He tries to quantify this uncertainty, providing both confidence intervals for each candidate's projections and their win probability, "which combines the vote projections and the uncertainty together to estimate how likely each candidate is to win the caucuses." Gingrich leads with an estimated 49.6% probability, followed by Paul, with 28.2%; Romney (10.6%); Perry (5.2%); and Bachmann (4.1%).

According to Silver's analysis, "Although Mr. Gingrich still has the lead, Iowa looks to be fairly wide open with as many as five plausible winners.

Gingrich Joins Romney at Top of GOP Race

Gallup reported on recent polling data that shows Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as the top choices among Republicans for their party's 2012 presidential nominee. 20% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say Romney is their top choice, while 19% say they would most likely support Gingrich; Herman Cain comes in at third with 16%. Among Republicans and Republican-leaners who are currently registered voters, however, Gingrich jumps into first place with 22%, followed closely by Romney (21%) and Cain (16%).

The USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Nov. 13-17, close to two weeks after a similar Nov. 3-6 poll. In that short time, Gingrich's support has increased from 12% to its current figure of 19% among Republicans nationwide. During this same time, Cain appears to have lost support--perhaps the result of recent allegations of sexual harassment levied against him. While 21% of Republicans supported him in the Nov. 3-6 poll, a smaller 16% favor him today. Rick Perry also continued to slip, from 11% in the last poll to 8% in this most recent one.

While most candidates appear to receive roughly equal support from conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans and Republican-leaners, Gingrich and Cain seem to hang their hat on the more conservative wing of Republican voters. Conservative Republicans and Republican-leaders are most likely to favor Gingrich (23%), followed by Romney (20%) and Cain (18%). But among moderate/liberal Republicans and Republican-leaners, Romney leads the race, checking in with 20% of the votes, while Gingrich and Cain each only garner 12% of the group's vote. According to Gallup, however, "conservatives outnumber moderates and liberals by better than 2-to-1 in the Republican rank-and-file." Gallup writes: "Gingrich and Cain appear to have benefited most from the decline in Perry's support."

Age appears to be a fairly large determinant of respondents' preferences. The GOP race would be a two-man battle between Gingrich (34%) and Romney (28%) if it were up to voters over 65 years of age. In fact, "Gingrich's support is heavily concentrated among Republicans who are at least 50." Part of this, Gallup surmises, may be due to the fact that Gingrich "has been out of public office for more than a decade, and [is] thus a less familiar figure to younger Republicans." Cain and Ron Paul, on the other hand, get most of their support from younger respondents. This would appear to favor Gingrich and Romney, as older Americans are typically more likely to head to the polls than younger Americans.

Gallup concludes: "With the first official nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, now just six weeks away, there is no clear national front-runner for the Republican nomination...the current contest stands to be the most competitive and perhaps most unpredictable for the Republican nomination since 1972, when the parties shifted the power to choose their presidential nominees away from party leaders at the national convention to the rank-and-file voters in state primaries and caucuses."

Obama Job Approval Rating Up; Romney Remains Main GOP Rival

A recent survey from Pew People and the Press shows that support for President Obama is up in November, and that Mitt Romney leads a group of GOP candidates about whom the public is not very excited. A majority of Americans (52%) express a favorable view of President Obama, compared with 45% of Americans who hold an unfavorable view. Americans do not hold GOP candidates in such high esteem: more Americans view Romney negatively than positively (42% unfavorable vs. 36% favorable); the same holds true for Newt Gingrich (48% vs. 31%), Herman Cain (50% vs. 29%) and Rick Perry (50% vs. 25%).

As was the case in October, however, the survey suggests that a race between Obama and Romney would run about even, with Romney's support among independents far exceeding Obama's. 49% of respondents say they would vote for Obama in a head-to-head race with Romney, while 47% say they would vote for Romney. Among independents, Romney is the clear winner, with only 41% saying they would vote for Obama, compared with 53% who choose Romney.

Although Obama's overall numbers are up, a majority of Americans (58%) disapprove of his handling of the economy. Only 35% of Americans say he is doing all he can for the economy, with 61% saying he could be doing more. This is a reversal from March 2009 results, when 60% of Americans said Obama was doing all he could, and only 30% said he could be doing more. Still, more respondents (48%) say that they have been hearing a mix of good and bad economic news--matching the 48% who say news is mostly bad--than in October, when 58% of respondents said economic news was mostly bad, as compared with only 39% who said there was a mix of good and bad news. Obama scores better in foreign policy (46% approve) and on his decision to remove all American combat troops from Iraq by the end of the year (75% approve).

Although the survey suggests that Romney would be a strong challenger to Obama in a head-to-head race, Republican voters remain largely unimpressed with the GOP field. Only 48% say Republican candidates are of excellent or fair quality, compared with 46% who rate the field as only fair or poor. Pew writes: "GOP voters’ ratings of the field have shown little improvement since May and are at least as low as ratings for Republican candidates at comparable points in the 2008 and 1996 campaigns."

One-Word Reactions To GOP Candidates Favor Herman Cain; Perry Draws the Most Ire

A recent survey that asked Americans to describe leading GOP leaders "in a single word" found that Herman Cain was viewed in the most favorable terms. Americans most frequently associated Cain with his proposed "9-9-9" tax plan, followed by his ties to business and 23 respondents who found him "interesting." Romney was most closely associated with his religion, Mormonism, and his work on health care, and Rick Perry was most often identified with his home state of Texas.

While nearly as many (12%) respondents used positive words as negative words (14%) to describe Cain, a higher percentage of respondents used negative words and not positive ones to describe both Romney (21% versus 11%) and Perry (25% versus 6%). But while the negative continued to outweigh the positive for Perry when the respondent group was limited to Republicans and GOP-leaners, with 19% using a negative word and only 9% a positive one, both Cain and Romney received more positive than negative feedback among their party's political base. Still, the support for Romney (18% positive versus 15% negative) was less impressive than that for Cain (22% versus 5%).In addition, the survey found that "many Americans are unable to come up with words to describe the three GOP candidates. Nearly half (46%) did not offer a one-word description of Cain, 44% did not offer a word to describe Perry and 37% did not have a one-word description of Romney." The survey was conducted by the Pew People & the Press and The Washington Post from October 13-16; its respondent population was 1,007 adults.

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Down Huckabee, Race for GOP Presidential Nomination Without a Clear Leader

According to Gallup, following Mike Huckabee's decision to withdraw his name from consideration, the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination lacks a clear leader. A March-April 2011 trial heat ballot among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, adjusting for the withdrawals of Huckabee and Donald Trump, suggests the lead is shared by three politicians: Mitt Romney (20%), Sarah Palin (18%), and Newt Gingrich (11%).
But current voter preferences are based more in recognition than anything else. Those three politicians also lead potential GOP candidates in name recognition among the polled population, with 96% recognizing Palin; 84% Gingrich; and 83% of those polled recognizing Romney. Writes Gallup: "The most well-known candidates lead in nomination support at this point, while those who are not as well-known lag behind."

Evidence for this view--that recent, post-Huckabee trial ballot results can be attributed primarily to candidate recognition and not real, strongly rooted voter preference--was found not only in the three most well-known candidates leading the results, but also from the relatively low level of excitement voters expressed for those three candidates. Positive Intensity scores, meant to measure the intensity of a voter's support for his/her candidate, showed that voters are less excited about these three potential candidates than they had been about Huckabee. While Palin scored only 16, Romney 14, and Gingrich 13, Huckabee's final Positive Intensity score for May 2-15 polling reached 25. The Positive Intensity score is calculated by taking the percentage of voters who recognize and have a strongly favorable opinion of a candidate and subtracting from that the percentage of voters who recognize and have a strongly unfavorable opinion of the candidate.Among those candidates who registered lower name recognition, Herman Cain (29% recognition) and Michele Bachmann (21%) received the highest Positive Intensity scores with 24 and 21, respectively. For those two and others "in the Republican field beyond Palin, Gingrich, and Romney," the greatest challenge "right now is increasing their name recognition." For Palin, Gingrich and Romney, the goal must be to increase their Positive Intensity scores among voters, assuming all three participate--or remain--in the race.According to Gallup, only one thing is clear following Huckabee's departure: "There is no clear front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination."

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