Do Or Die

It seems to me increasingly implausible to imagine Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination if he loses to John McCain in Florida tomorrow. With Rudy and Huckabee fading, the chances of a grinding, three or four-way delegate war that goes all the way to the convention are fading as well, which means that it'll be down to Romney and McCain (with Huckabee playing spoiler in some southern states) as soon as Floridians finish voting. And if you look at the polls in the upcoming states, Romney's trailing McCain all across the map, from California to New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Missouri to Alabama. Some of these deficits are surmountable, but not if McCain heads into February 5th with the wind at his back. Like Obama going into South Carolina, Romney needs a game-changer tomorrow night - and the numbers, for what little they're worth, aren't trending in an encouraging direction.

Photo by Flickr user Why Tuesday used under a Creative Commons license.

Comments

What's the post-Feb 5th territory look like for Romney? It seems bad: ME, WA, and VA look like McCain territory to me unless Romney can win Super Tuesday.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | January 28, 2008 1:28 PM

Romney can still win if he loses in Florida.

Most polls have it as a close race and Romney is still leading by double digits amongst Republicans in most states. McCain's win in SC didn't give him any perceivable advantage going into Florida, he and Romney both ate up Thompson and Giuliani's supporters, and Romney didn't have any contested primary victory to sail in on. His success seems to have come from campaigning and advertising; in other words from having a better campaign machine and deeper pockets. This formula for success is well suited for competing in 20+ states. If Romney can replicate this success elsewhere, he'll still be a competitive candidate on Feb. 5 and perhaps afterwards.

Posted by Andrew | January 28, 2008 1:42 PM

Romney's problems even if he wins Florida:

Regardless of whether McCain or Romney wins Florida, there's a very good chance that Giuliani will drop out before Feb. 5th, and his supporters will most likely go heavily to McCain.

Romney has always polled poorly throughout the South (aside from Florida) and in most of the Northeast (where Giuliani and McCain have always done well), which means that he really needs to clean up in the Midwest and West if he's going to win the nomination. Last year, the state GOP in New York, New Jersey and CT all changed their primaries to winner-take-all for the delegates, in order to help Giuliani. If Giuliani drops out by Feb. 5th, McCain is really going to clean up in the Northeast.

For Romney, cleaning up in the West and Midwest has to include winning California. Unfortunately for him, California has a screwy delegate system, in which delegates are awarded by congressional district, and each district gets the same number of delegates, regardless of how Democratic or Republican the district is. There are a lot of districts in big cities like LA and San Fran with virtually no Republicans, so a handful of voters in those areas would be in a position to deliver a huge number of delegates. Those would most likely go to McCain, since I'd assume that the few Republicans that exist in those big cities would be more moderate than your average Republican. Thus McCain could well win most of California's delegates even if he loses the popular vote in the state.

Posted by Chris S. | January 28, 2008 2:17 PM

I really think South Carolina was the "do or die" state for Romney. He really needed to show that he could play as a candidate in the South. Yet he came in fourth after even Thompson who people said was dead then.

Posted by Thomas | January 28, 2008 2:37 PM

Can any of the commentators who post here regularly answer the following: What is different about McCain 2000 and McCain 2008, except his age and the outside alternatives?

Posted by SavageView | January 28, 2008 2:54 PM

Romney's odds of winning the nomination outright at this point probably depend on a McCain meltdown. The possibility of which is, of course, very real; we're talking about Senator McCain, remember.

If McCain somehow gets crushed in Florida, that could be the beginning of a meltdown. But all the polls now show a close race. If he loses Florida narrowly to Romney, he should still win Arizona, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey on Feb 5th, all of which are winner-take all, and total 236 delegates. Romney polls terribly across the South; Arkansas will go to Huckabee, and Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia will presumably split their delegates between Huckabee and McCain. That's another 280 delegates that Romney can't get on Feb 5th, for a total of 516 delegates out of 1081, or nearly 50% that are essentially out of reach.

Romney can count on winning basically all the delegates from Massachusetts and Utah (the latter being winner-take-all), together totalling 79. Then there's Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota. Romney should be able to do well in Colorado and Montana because these are relatively conservative states with a significant Mormon population. But even if he wins Florida, he's not going to win all the delegates from California, Illinois and Minnesota. Missouri is winner-take-all, but all three candidates are competitive there and the last polling put Romney in third.

Romney not only has to win every state he has a chance of winning - he needs to win by decisive margins. In a realistic Romney dream scenario, where he wins Florida, Massachusetts and Utah, McCain wins New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Arizona, Huckabee wins Arkansas, McCain and Huckabee split the remaining southern states 65% Huckabee 35% McCain, and the delegate split in the remaining states where Romney's competitive is 60% Romney, 30% McCain, 10% Huckabee, then the delegate count after Feb 5th looks like this:

McCain: 510
Romney: 499
Huckabee: 234

In these circumstances, Romney would certainly be the strongest of the three - to win 60% of the delegates from the Western and Midwestern states in contention, he'd need to win a lot of states. But he wouldn't be winning the delegate count; he would have been shut out in the South; and he would still have a slog ahead of him to get the nomination, because there are only 1032 delegates still to be won after February 5th, and he would need 692 of them, or nearly 70%. And remember: this is where Romney is after decisive victories in the competitive states on February 5th. If it's more of a muddle - if Romney wins California narrowly and Colorado decisively, but McCain wins Maine, Illinois and Minnesota, and Huckabee wins Missouri - then even after losing Florida and California McCain would be the clear leader in terms of number of states won, number of regions where he has won, and delegates amassed, and Romney could be under 400 delegates with essentially no chance to win the nomination in the remaining contests (he'd need nearly 80% of the remaining delegates up for grabs after February 5th in this scenario).

Of course, in this scenario - where February 5th is a muddled result where everyone wins a few states and everyone gets delegates - it's also tough for McCain to win the nomination outright, though not as tough as it is for Romney. Going into a brokered convention - which I do not expect - you'd think McCain would be in a weak position, even if he won the plurality of the delegates, since he would have failed to unite the party, failed to close the sale. But remember: Huckabee and McCain are very friendly, and Huckabee has no chance of winning the nomination. I think the odds that McCain and Huckabee walk into the convention arm-in-arm are pretty high in a scenario where no individual has a majority of delegates, but the two of them together clear the threshold. Romney, by contrast, really has to win this thing outright to have a chance. And with the Northeast and the South basically out of contention on February 5th, that's a very hard thing to accomplish.

Unless McCain implodes in spectacular fashion. Which he has been known to do.

Posted by Noah Millman | January 28, 2008 3:03 PM

SavageView, the difference between McCain this year and McCain eight years ago is that he is not facing a viable conservative candidate.

Noah Millman, Mitt Romney even has admitted he can't win Massachusetts. That is ground zero for knowledge of Mitt's flipping and flopping.

Posted by Thomas | January 28, 2008 3:58 PM

Thomas: Really? When? Latest polling (from Survey USA) shows him with a nearly 20 point lead in Mass. Where is your data from saying that he can't win in his home state? Are you sure you're not confusing a statement about the general election with a statement about the nomination contest?

Posted by Noah Millman | January 28, 2008 4:20 PM

Yeah, Romney will win the primary in Massachusetts (while getting destroyed in all the other Northeastern states voting on Super Tuesday)....but he'd obviously have no chance of winning it in the general election.

Posted by Chris S. | January 28, 2008 4:24 PM

Liz Cheney, Dick's well-embedded daughter at the State Department, working on Middle East affairs, has endorsed Romney. And Mary Matalin has moved from the Thompson camp to the Romney camp. The Neocons are firmly behind Romney.
I checked back on Ken Lay's donations to the GOP in '01 and '02. He made many, really covered the waterfront - and energyfront - but not a dollar to McCain. But he gave to Romney and DeLay.
Neocons and Big Business, same-old, same-old - Romney is a master practitioner of Crony Capitalism. This guy isn't a conservative, this guy is running for Bush's Third Term.

Posted by fougasseu | January 28, 2008 4:55 PM

SavageView, the difference between McCain this year and McCain eight years ago is that he is not facing a viable conservative candidate.

Although I clearly noted outside alternatives in my post, I don't understand this answer.

Why is Romney not (a) viable and (b) a conservative? What is the conservative litmus test that McCain passes today, that Romney does not, and that McCain failed eight years ago? If Giuliani were the only alternative to McCain, I could understand why conservatives would balk, but Romney? By almost any standard, he's conservatively bland through and through.

Posted by SavageView | January 28, 2008 5:28 PM

The other thing Romney has going for him (which I've mentioned before) is generally superior organization in caucus states, where delegate nominations and procedural arcana, rather than a primary, determine the winner. Did you know that Hawaii just selected the delegates to its state convention? From reports I hear, the only organized forces at work were those of Romney and Paul (sort of like Nevada). Romney won Wyoming in a similar manner. West Virginia is a little more up in the air, but Romney still has a big lead in committed delegates to the state convention.
Don't discount the tailwind this effort gives him. He can't afford to get crushed so badly that he's perceived as a loser going into Super Tuesday, but as long as he can avoid getting written off he should be competitive to the end.

Posted by bbartlog | January 28, 2008 5:59 PM

SavageView, I guess I just don't understand what Mitt Romney is saying. He says he supports George W. Bush yet he says Washington is broken. He says he supports the Reagan revolution yet he decries the people swept into Washington (McCain) as a result of it. Romney is against President Bush's immigration plan when two years ago it was "reasonable."

I think he is probably a rather conservative guy but his rightward shift the last few years seems a little insincere since he tries to erase his moderate past by being the most conservative candidate on every issue ever. President Bush didn't present himself that way in 2000. He had some moderation.

But people in the middle aren't going to like Romney because to them he will seem like some kind of demagogue. The worst of both worlds since the middle won't trust him but neither will the right.

Posted by Thomas | January 29, 2008 12:07 AM

Anyone else notice that there are two "Ron Paul" signs in the picture of Romney?

I'm not sure what it portends for the campaign, but it sure is funny.

Posted by Glaivester | January 30, 2008 10:17 PM