No silver mask?Then it's not Santo.

 This guy is running for president.  Not of the senior class, president of the United States.

A lot of people don't like using his last name.  Since you found this blog on the Internet, you probably know why.  On Twitter, several people are shortening his name to Santo.

I hope this trend will stop.

Santo is a hero.  Santo has a silver mask.  Santo fights the Vampire Women, not The Women Who Want To Go To College or The Women Who Don't Want To Get Pregnant.

The name is taken, please use something else.

Thank you for your kind attention.

This is how it always starts...

Gallup National Tracking numbers Feb. 1 through Feb. 23

 

The early weeks of February were great for Sick Rantorum as he climbed from third to first in national tracking numbers as well as winning caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota. But as has been the case in for several months now, getting to 35% support and staying there just isn't in the cards.  Gingrich started December above 35% but plummeted, only to make a comeback in January that saw him over 30% but under 35%.  R-Money was the only candidate to break the magical 35% barrier in January, and both he and Rantorum have been above that level in February, but neither could maintain it for more than a few days.

National numbers are little more than background noise in terms of delegates.  Sadly for Senator Rick, his numbers are also slipping in Arizona and Michigan, the two states holding primaries this Tuesday.  R-Money has had the lead in every Arizona poll so far, but Rantorum looked to be gaining until this last debate.  We will see if the trend continues in the polls over the weekend.  If it does, expect Nate Silver and me to project Mitt as the victor in both.  In a normal election year I'd be a lot more confident of the general trend on a Friday before a Tuesday polling date, but this primary season is still as insanely volatile as this February has been insanely warm here in Northern California.

Eventually, Newt or Senator Rick will throw in the towel.  In a two and a half person race, someone will have to climb over the 40% support level.  My guess is the Last NonRomney Standing will take the lead and then be pulled back earthward both by his weaknesses and by attacks from R-Money and the super PACs that back him.

As for the talk about a brokered convention, right now that is just silliness, like trying to predict the Oscars that will be handed out a year from now.  The fundamentals of this race still favor R-Money to get the nomination and face an uphill battle to unseat Obama.  In some ways I'd like to see the Tea Party get who they want for a candidate and have that candidate drubbed soundly. If Mitt loses in November, I expect the crazier voices in the Republican echo chamber will just get louder and more strident. In any case, it's not going to be pretty.

I'll be back with my predictions for Tuesday races on Tuesday morning.

The official Lotsa 'Splainin' titles for the GOP front runners

 Regular readers will already know that I call Mitt Romney R-Money, a simple transposition of his last name with the hyphen thrown in to make him look more like a gangsta rapper.

Because like gangsta rappers, nothing is more important to R-Money than the Benjamins and morality is not allowed to get in the way.

I have been reluctant to use Senator Rick's last name, but a commenter on Talking Points Memo just did a simple spoonerism and called him Sick Rantorum.

Sick Rantorum is now his official name on this blog.  I would tell you who I saw first write this on the other website, but I told him I was going to steal it and not give him credit, and I am true to my word.

So now it's a two-man race.

R-Money: Core beliefs are for poor people

Sick Rantorum: Officially crazier that the Catholic Church

(Things can change, but the polls for the next races and the most recent results say Newt Gingrich is a dead man walking.)

A Christian nation. Where most of the Christians hate each other.

Until all the rest of the no-hope candidates dropped out, Senator Rick Santorum was a third-tier candidate. When they had a larger selection to choose from, Republican voters preferred nearly anybody: Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry all had their rises and falls before Senator Rick did.  The only candidate who was below Senator Rick in the polls consistently in December was Jon Huntsman.

The reasons are these.  Not a lot of people knew the name and many of the people who did know the name knew he was a very creepy religious nut.

The very creepy part of his persona cannot be kept quiet for long.  Yesterday in Ohio, speaking to a group of Tea Partiers, he was quoted by Reuters as saying Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

When asked about the statement at a news conference later, Senator Rick said, "If the president says he's a Christian, he's a Christian."

And this is exactly what's wrong with the idea that America is a Christian nation.  Most of the people who founded the country did proclaim a love for Jesus Christ, but they also hated and distrusted the people in the church across the street, people who "said they were Christians", but believed some strange and not really Biblical theology.

In the 21st Century, the schisms among the sects really haven't gone away. The remaining Republican presidential candidates are comprised of one Baptist, one Mormon and two Catholics. One of the Catholics (Gingrich) has a lifelong problem with keeping faith, now on his third wife and his third religion. R-Money is really not making a fuss about his Mormonism, though that is where a huge amount of his charitable contributions go.  (It would be interesting to see his tax returns from the year Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California.) Senator Rick, on the other hand, is a seriously doctrinaire Catholic, not only against abortion, but also quality of life options at the end of life, contraception, vasectomies and hysterectomies. And if you happen to take a different view, you are obviously biased against Catholics.

I'm a non-believer by nature. This means I'm not an atheist, because an atheist believes there is no God. I don't know what's out there and don't even have a good idea where to look for evidence one way or the other.  Freedom of religion protects me as well. There is no point to freedom of religion without freedom from religion. The idea of separation of church and state is that none of the flavors of Christianity could force their beliefs on others, the people who went to that false un-Christian church across the street that had a cross on the roof just for show.

In a sensible presidential campaign, Senator Rick's latest upward trend would just be a blip, because his new followers aren't sending him much cash just yet. R-Money, Gingrich and even the no-hope Dr. Ron Paul have much larger war chests than he does. But this campaign has shown very little sense. If the Tea Party really is the tail wagging the Republican dog, he may yet emerge as the True NotRomney, and then the race will become even more unpredictable. But President Rick Santorum would be a disaster for this country and a disaster for the free world because in his heart, he is a Catholic first and an American second.  That won't do.

Here endeth the lesson.

A story more complex than the media likes it.

 It's been about a week since any vote was cast in the Republican presidential primaries, and even those votes are now in doubt.  The official count was that R-Money beat Paul in Maine, but the results may change.  Like in the Iowa caucus, Mitt yet may be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We are still a week and a half until another meaningful vote with primaries in Michigan and Arizona.  There has been a crazy amount of polling in Michigan and all the data says about the same thing.  Senator Rick, he of the last name that shall not be mentioned, has a big lead in Michigan, which is something of an embarrassment for R-Money, who was born there and whose father was governor about a half century ago. R-Money made a TV ad showing off his Michigan roots and as usual, he sucks at the whole positive message thing.  The car he was driving is a Chrysler made in Canada, and a picture of his dad and young R-Money visiting the Detroit Auto Show was actually a picture of them at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

Ooopsie.

So Senator Rick is now the front runner.  All the media says so.

Not so fast.

Two polls taken in the past few days in Arizona tell us R-Money still has a lead of about 8% there, trimmed significantly from the beginning of the month when Newt was the presumed NotRomney. The big difference between the two contests is Michigan splits its 30 delegates proportionally and Arizona has 29 delegates, winner take all. In Michigan, a candidate has to pass the 15% threshold, which should be easy for the front runners and a challenge for Gingrich and Paul.

I'm not exactly sure what to make of all this data pointing in different directions.  Maybe each of the candidates other than Dr. Paul (Vote Ron Paul! Give up hope! You'll be fine with gold and dope!) is a regional candidate, Gingrich in the south, Senator Rick in the Midwest, R-Money in the eastern seaboard and the Mormon west.  One thing that is clear is Senator Rick is at a massive money disadvantage. His recent successes have not changed the fact he was a third-tier candidate for over six months, getting the kind of donations you expect from a no-hoper without a rabid base.  The next time the campaign budget numbers are updated, maybe he'll be doing better, but when the guy you are trying to beat has 30 times as much money in the bank as you do, the question is can he close the gap enough to make a difference.

There isn't enough data to make things clear right now.  I don't expect things will be clearer after the primaries on the 28th or even the Super Tuesday contests a week later. Part of the media's favorite message right now does ring true.  R-Money hasn't sealed the deal yet, and it's hard to say if all his cash can make him a more attractive candidate when all is said and done.

In the words of Shane McGowan...

There's an ice-cold beer for Father McGreer
And a short one for Father Loyola
Father John's got the clap again
So he's drinking Coca-Cola.

Rain Street, The Pogues

These worthies, of course, are the witnesses asked to speak about birth control by a Republican house committee chaired by Darrel Issa. I believe they want their country back.  They did not specify what year would work best, but I'm guessing any time in the 19th Century would suit them just fine.

 

The second dawn for Senator Rick

The Gallup tracking poll for early February, 2/1 to 2/12

For this post and all posts and tweets after this I am going to call Rick Santorum Senator Rick. We no longer have to worry about confusion with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, so Senator Rick (or just Rick) is his official name here. Anyone who has Google knows why I am squeamish about his last name.

Newt Gingrich did great in South Carolina, but it's been downhill ever since, getting a truly pathetic 6% in the Maine caucuses and barely crossing the 10% threshold in Colorado and Minnesota. Last week Senator Rick was anointed the True NotRomney, the candidate from the right who can stand in contrast to Romney's pragmatism, which in his case smells an awful lot like wishy-washiness. 

No one can call Senator Rick wishy-washy or pragmatic. He holds the hard line position on every hot button right wing issue I can think of.  Most notably, he spent much of his Senate career railing against abortion and gays. He shows no sign of moderating his views EVER, so if he gets the nomination, this truly will be The Tea Party vs. Obama.

Right now, national polls show Rick trailing Obama by about the same numbers that R-Money is trailing Obama, which punches a big hole in Mitt's electability argument. The thing we haven't seen yet is how Senator Rick will survive the full-on Super PAC assault. I expect he will pass R-Money this week, but I have no idea what the situation will look like on February 28, the date for the next two big primaries in Arizona and Michigan. It's kind of silly predicting anything more than a few days ahead. The Republican field is still more changeable than the weather. But if there are some trends that look obvious now, it's the end for Gingrich and Paul's best days are behind him. Paul believes in his crusade more than Newt believes in his, so Paul could hang on to the bitter end.  

I'm going to agree with Senator Rick and say it's a two-man race now.  In most American political races, especially intra-party, it makes sense to give the nod to the guy with the most money. That would mean R-Money will be the nominee, but not before this race rips the party apart.

You've gotta love spin!Sorry, I take that back. Actually, you don't.

 There were two political contests yesterday that got press coverage and Mitt R-Money (sorry, Romney) won them both. One was the Maine caucuses, which he has won before in 2008 and the other was the CPAC straw poll, which he won in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Reading the press coverage, you would think he lost.  His margin was bigger four years ago, the turnout to both was miniscule, blah blah blah...

Quite simply, the press has a narrative and doesn't like to give it up.  The earlier narrative for R-Money (sorry, I keep doing that) was that he was inevitable, but after a loss to Gingrich in South Carolina there were questions.  He won Florida and Nevada and then he was inevitable again, but a bad Tuesday for him and a great Tuesday for Santorum this week and suddenly it's Beat Up Mitt Time again.

Want to know who deserves to get beat up?  Newt Gingrich deserves to get beat up, at least figuratively by the press.  After a win in South Carolina which most people rack up to his insulting of debate moderator Juan Williams, Gingrich has gone downhill in a big way.  Here's the ugly tally.

Florida: gets 31.9%, finishes second by 14.5% in a state that neighbors his former home state of Georgia. Newt wasn't born in Georgia and no longer lives there, but he was elected to the House from Georgia's 6th District. He's a Washington insider now and has been for decades.

Nevada: Gets 21.1%, loses to R-Money by 28.9% (You know what? I'm going to stop saying I'm sorry.  That's the way I spell Mitt's last name now.) Barely beats Ron Paul for second place.

Colorado: 12.8% of the vote, a distant third. Can only beat Ron Paul.

Minnesota: 10.8% of the vote.  Finishes fourth. Not even in the conversation. Ron Paul gets more than double his votes and Santorum gets four times as many votes.

Maine: 6%, 12 points behind Santorum. Not even in the discussion with R-Money and Paul.

The technical mathematical term we use for a sequence of numbers like these is a plummet.

I'll be fair, because it's my nature.  This is a strange race and Gingrich may yet pull out of this tailspin.  I have a hard time believing the Republicans will decide in the end that Santorum truly is the NotRomney, but I now believe that eventually, they will have to admit R-Money is their candidate, like it or not. (I also think a lot of Republicans may decide on "not like it" and clamor for a third party candidate, which hands a second term to Obama on a silver platter.) But the narrative for Newt Gingrich now should be Old And In The Way. Maybe he'll find some way to get his mojo back in a debate, but between now and February 28, the next primary date that matters, Newton Leroy Gincrich is sitting on a big pile of negative momentum. Just like Perry and Bachmann and Huntsman before him, he's going to have to decide soon that it's time to go.

Two contests, no prognostications.

 The results of the Maine caucuses are being reported tonight, but neither Nate Silver or I will be making any predictions because there were ZERO polls taken.  Since Maine is so close to Massachusetts, both Santorum and Gingrich put in zero effort, but Ron Paul has been wooing Maine voters like crazy.  There are people predicting an upset, but there is no real data, so these are just wild guesses. There are 24 delegates up for grabs, twice as many as New Hampshire this year because of penalties handed out to the Granite State.  But no one polled the good people of Maine, so we'll just have to wait until this evening to find out what happened.

The other numbers that will be released today are the results of the CPAC Straw Poll. There is no point in a polling company trying to poll such a small and meaningless gathering, but winning here at least gives a campaign a little boost in the 24 hour news cycle.  The organizers are miffed that Ron Paul won the straw poll in both 2011 and 2010, so they changed the way the contest is run to make it easier for all attendees to have their voice heard.  While the victories of Paul in the last two years are something of an embarrassment for the organization, Almost no one brings us that before Paul's winning streak the winner of the straw poll in 2007, 2008 and 2009 was... Mitt Romney.

This gives you some idea why the press covers CPAC. It's easy to get to (held in D.C.) and it's always good for a laugh. It had a "reputation" as the herald of Ronald Reagan back in the day, but like the rest of the conservative movement, the successes they can point to since then are few and far between, especially now that George W. Bush has been erased from history, even by his own team. The Bush whitewash is so effective, the ghost of Joseph Stalin let loose a low whistle and said with admiration, "Damn. You guys aren't playing around, are you?"

An interesting number from a meaningless race.

Public Policy Polling is a Democratic company and they work cheap, relying on robo-polls.  For all that, their track record for accuracy is good.  Late last month, they published a poll about next Tuesday's Missouri primary, a "beauty contest" that produces no delegates. Newt Gingrich's name does not appear on the ballot, so he wasn't a choice in the poll PPP conducted. In that sampling, Santorum beat Romney 45% to 34%. Ron Paul was at 13%, about what he gets in most polls in a four way race.

Eventually, Santorum or Gingrich will drop out, and right now it's much more likely to be Santorum, given the beatings he took in both South Carolina and Florida. When it gets down to Romney, NotRomney and Dr. Paul (the only one who can save us from the Daleks), Romney will be in second place for a while.  In the long run, I still think Romney wins the nomination just because Republicans will finally be resigned to the fact that Santorum or Gingrich will be crushed by Obama.

Back to PPP for a second.  They published their results for the Nevada caucuses this morning, so unless there is another poll no one has mentioned yet, I have my numbers ready for the Nevada race, which is held tomorrow. Nate Silver hasn't factored PPP in yet, so I'll wait until he does and publish our predictions together. We both have the same data and there is so little to use, I doubt we will disagree by much. 

Maine has a caucus as well, but no polls have been produced so I have no way to predict anything and I'm going to take a pass.

Playing around with numbers!  So much fun for a nerd like Matty Boy.

A look back at another strange month in politics.

Gallup tracking poll for January 2012

(click for larger version)

Nearly everyone agrees that national polls have little meaning, but Gallup - bless their very traditional hearts - does tracking polls every damn day, which give us the chance to see a cool jagged line graph like the one above.  The red and orange squiggles that have now flat-lined are Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, respectively.  Perry had a big bump when he got in, but when he showed himself time and again not to be George W. Bush's intellectual equal - and possibly not even Sarah Palin's peer - the bloom was off the rose and he limped back to Texas.  Huntsman didn't even have a time in the sun.  Besides not having much name recognition, Huntsman is way too moderate for today's GOP.  The fact he took a job in the Obama administration is tantamount in Republicans' eyes today to selling nuclear secrets to Iran.

The big stories of the month were the alleged inevitability of Mitt Romney after New Hampshire, the voters giving Gingrich a second surge to take South Carolina and Romney's return to front runner status after a big win in Florida.  While the numbers are interesting, it's the characters that make this reality show such a riveting train wreck.  Even Republicans are astonished at tone deaf Mitt's latest number one smash on The Gaffe Parade "I'm not concerned about the very poor." When your best candidate is so damn clueless, no wonder None Of The Above is almost never lower than third place and refuses to dip below 15%. Some network should let None Of The Above show up at a debate, just an empty podium with a slideshow of Republicans who either declared they wouldn't run or dropped out before we got to this Not So Fab Four.

I'll put up a similar graph at the end of each month until someone sews up enough delegates to win the nomination.  That means at least through February and I wouldn't be surprised if there is still some action in March and possibly beyond. November is a very long way, but I have a hard time seeing one of these guys actually beating Obama. Obama is going to have to beat himself, and so far in his career, that isn't his style.

Results for prognostication #4: The Florida primary

It was a good night to do things simply. My methods predicted the final numbers more accurately than did Nate Silver's.  There were no surprises, as the basic order of Romney winning big over Gingrich, with Santorum and Paul trailing was what all polls said in the last few days.  The nearest thing to drama arose from polls that said the race between Santorum and Paul be close. It wasn't.  Both Silver and I overstated what Ron Paul would get, which brought our overall grade down. If this was a strict grading policy, we'd both get A-, since I was 91.0% accurate he was at 90.0%.  

Here are the results, candidate by candidate.

 Romney 46.4%(Both of us low, but I beat Silver by 0.5%)

 Gingrich 31.9%(Again, both low. I beat Silver by 1.7%)

Santorum 13.4%(I gain 0.1%, he was high and I was low)

Paul 7.0%(I lose 0.3% to Silver, both of us too high)

Other 1.3%(I lose 1.0% to Silver, he was high and I was low)

This battle was close due to the Other prediction.  My numbers just happened to dole out all the votes to the four candidates, while Silver's method said Other would get 1.6% of the vote. Reality was 1.3% for the stragglers, so Silver was 1.0% closer.

In the prediction contest, Silver and I are tied 2-2. I eked a win in Iowa and won last night. Silver's numbers were much better in South Carolina and he won in New Hampshire because I got silly and caught Buddy Roemer fever based on a single poll.

There are four caucuses in the next week, Nevada and Maine this Saturday, Minnesota and Colorado next Tuesday. As of right now, fresh data is scarce in all these places, but I expect that to change in the next few days. I reserve the right to make no prediction without at least one poll that is taken within a week of the actual vote. Barring that, I will be ready to toe the line twice early Saturday morning and the same on Tuesday.  After that, February has only two primaries, Arizona and Michigan, both on February 28, so the crystal ball will have a few weeks off.

While I'm interested in politics, this is really an excuse to fiddle with numbers, and longtime readers will know how much I enjoy that.  So gimme some data and let's get back in the ring!

What a difference millions of dollars can make.

Quinnipiac polls - this week and last week

Just after Newt Gingrich's huge win in South Carolina, the conventional wisdom was that Mitt Romney's many flaws were become more and more evident and there was nowhere to go but down.  It was agreed that Newt Gingrich's many flaws were also evident, but Republican voters had decided to ignore them and give him the nod.  The next state was Florida, also in the south, also adjacent to Georgia, Newt's alleged home state - in actuality, he's a Washington insider now and lives in Virginia - and Newt would smack around Romney once again, leaving his once seemingly inevitable nomination in grave doubt.

Then the cash rolled in.

A flip switched early this week, or should I say if flipped for the third time. In early December polling, Gingrich looked great in Florida, then he faded and Romney looked great, then it was Gingrich again, and the last flip was to Romney.  All the polls of the past few days have shown Romney around 40% and Gingrich around 30%. The race for who will finish a distant third between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum is not so clear, but noises are being made that Santorum is ready to pack it in.  Paul's impossible dream is a Quixotic quest, and those kinds of people don't give up so easily.

You know what I mean by "those kinds of people".  The bughouse crazy.

The column charts above show two polls from the folks at Quinnipiac University.  The poll on the right is one of the first to show Romney back in the lead after South Carolina, and the one on the left shows how much that lead has been expanded.  The pro-Romney super PACs have out-spent the pro-Gingrich super PACs about 4:1, and as people delicately put it, this can make a big difference to "low information voters".

You know what I mean by "low information voters". The rock fucking stupid.

To be fair, I don't consider it stupid to switch from Gingrich to Romney.  That said, I expect another big Newt surge when Santorum goes away. Most observers think Mitt is doing better at the debates, and as long as he doesn't do his punching bag impression at these bizarre circuses, he and his supporters - who cannot coordinate with him in any way, as Stephen Colbert explained to us in South Carolina - will spend enough money to force Gingrich to go back to writing books and getting money from companies who need lobbyists who don't call themselves lobbyists.

You know what that means. He's an escort, not a ho.

¡Ay, dios mio!¡La orgia de locura y horror en Florida!

The polls in Florida are going nuts. Gingrich had a comfortable lead just a couple of days ago, but several recent polls have Romney way ahead.  Let us recall that Florida is not South Carolina.  The northern half of the state, sometimes called the Redneck Riviera, will love the red meat thrown out by Gingrich, but the southern half is more metropolitan than Dixie-ish, and Mitt is favored down there.

And now throw this into the mix. Univision interviewed Newt, Mitt and Santorum, but not Ron Paul? (I smell a conspiracy.) One of the Univision interviewers "went there" and asked if Mitt could be counted - if elected - as the first Mexican-American president.

Lemme 'splain.

Mitt's granddaddy was in a little trouble concerning the polygamy laws in the good of U.S. of A., so he skedaddled down Mexico way.  Daddy George was born on Mexican soil. The heat warmed up south of the border for other reasons, so the Romneys cross the border back to the Land of the Free Gift With Purchase.  Mitt was born here, so he is officially an anchor baby.

His name is actually Willardo Miteo Romney Garcia-Lopez.  For gringos unfamiliar with the lingo, that is pronounced "WeeJARdo MeeTAYo R-R-R-R-R-R-ROMney GarCEEah LoPETH.  The z is pronounced with the Castilian lisp because... well, it's more fun.

P.S. Okay, I'll admit it.  I made up the last paragraph.  The one just before it is the gospel truth.

P.P.S.  The name La Orgia de Locura y Horror is the Spanish for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Its literal translation is "The Orgy of Craziness and Horror".  I saw it with subtitles in El Salvador.  I was asked to leave for talking back to the screen like a borracho gringo.  I wasn't actually drunk.

And then the Republicans lost their damn minds.

Gallup tracking poll for January 2012

 

Last month, the opinion polls showed a surge for Newt Gingrich after Herman Cain suspended his campaign.  Gingrich celebrated by doing what he does best, spouting half-baked ideas whose flaws are apparent to any sensible person inside of ten seconds or so.  The most egregious was his idea about arresting "radical" judges, completely oblivious to the obvious fact that Democrats might consider some conservative decisions like Citizens United "radical" and decide to arrest a few Supreme Court members.  Moreover, arresting the people at the top of the judicial system means their fate will be decided by people... in the judicial system.

Seriously, it takes about ten seconds to think of these things.

So, running his mouth, Gingrich fell back.  The people of Iowa fell in love with Rick Santorum and anointed him the Not Romney, but New Hampshire put the two Not Romneys at the back of the pack, well behind Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who both trailed Romney by over 20 percentage points.

Then came South Carolina.  Much bigger than Iowa or New Hampshire, but a whole lot redder.  A super PAC favoring Gingrich nailed Romney's Bain Capital as a job killer and the Republican echo chamber went mad with cries of class warfare.  Gingrich had to walk back the attack, though technically it didn't come from him.  Still, it was enough to wound Romney big time and the bleeding hasn't stopped.

As of today, January 24, the polls now put Gingrich back as the front runner.  Republican voters are not interested in hearing about his many flaws, though the number of people on the right who hate Gingrich are legion.

 

Rasmussen asked voters across the spectrum about Obama vs. Romney and Obama vs. Gingrich.  Obama leads Romney 46% to 43%, while Obama creams Gingrich 49% to 40%. During January, there have been a couple polls where Romney was ahead of Obama and another where they tied.  Gingrich's best showing is losing by 7%.

Republican voters have lost their damn minds.  It's not all their fault.  Given such a weak field, the questions about electability become academic.  They want someone as angry as they are and in this field, Newt Gingrich is the closest they are going to get. They think Gingrich will win the debates against Obama the way he's been beating the Republicans at the debates.  Little do they know that when the audience isn't all "mouth breathing paste eaters" as my blog buddy Tengrain puts it, many of the big applause lines Newt has are going to be booed.

I honestly think that if the people of the United States get a steady diet of Newton Leroy Gingrich for a year, there is a significant chance he will lose in Georgia.

I'm sure if any right-winger stumbles upon this, he or she will think I'm just some Communist who's been drinking the Kool-Aid and dismiss my argument.

I can't stop them.  There's not much you can do to dissuade crazy people.

Results for Prognostication #3:The South Carolina primary

A bad week for my way of predicting the future. The loss of Huntsman as a candidate didn't hurt much, but losing Perry so close to the election date made a lot of polls fairly useless. Nate Silver's numbers were closer to the truth of Gingrich's big win over Romney, but both of us had Ron Paul in third place when Rick Santorum was actually five percentage points better.  Here are the final numbers.

Gingrich 40.4%(Silver beats me by 1.7%)

Romney 27.8%(Silver beats by by 2.2%)

Santorum 17%(I gain 0.1%)

Paul 13%(I lose 0.4%)

Other 1.8%(I gain 0.4%)

 

Final score: Silver 90.4%, Matty Boy 86.6%.  This is the first time either of us has climbed over the 90% mark.

The next test is Florida, a week from Tuesday.  Current polls have Romney ahead by double digits, but that means nothing.  Romney had a comfortable lead in South Carolina a week ago before the debates and the Bain Capital attacks.

 

Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson gets credit for the line "A week is a very long time in politics", and these ten days will certainly be tumultuous.  The hatred the Republican establishment has for Newt Gingrich will once again rain down, but I can't tell if it will counterbalance Romney's negatives with the rank and file, who don't like his regal manner, religion or record in office. Bill Clinton's aphorism "Democratic voters fall in love, Republican voters fall in line" doesn't sound quite as clever as it did after New Hampshire. 

 

Prognostication #3:The South Carolina primary - UPDATED

When it comes to predicting percentages based on recent polls, South Carolina is one of the toughest challenges yet.  I base my numbers on five polls taken in the past three days, but only two of them took Rick Perry out of the equation. His numbers were on the rise in Gallup tracking polls nationally, but he was well under 5% in South Carolina polls and faced the unpleasant possibility of being compared to the "Herman Cain" (actually Stephen Colbert) comedy campaign.

So now we are down to four.  Almost all the recent polls agree on the order: Gingrich, Romney, Paul, Santorum. (Only PPP switches Santorum over Paul.)  Based on a weighting of the median and the average of those five surveys, here's my prediction for South Carolina, rounded to the nearest half a percent. Nate Silver's numbers are given in parentheses.

Gingrich 37%(38.7%)

Romney 31.5%(29.3%)

Paul 16%(15.6%)

Santorum 14%(13.9%)

Other 1.5%(2.5%)

This means Silver is bullish on Gingrich and Other, while I am hoping for strong showings Romney, Paul and Santorum.

Colbert is a wild card, being both a South Carolina favorite son and a TV star, but I am betting the vast majority of conservatives realize his conservative persona is making fun of them. Also, there is the weird public appearance mojo of Friday. Gingrich had to cancel an event for low attendance, while the joint appearance of Colbert and Cain drew about 3,000.  Let's assume most of the those at the Colbert rally are not likely primary voters.

Also helping the Other votes is Perry dropping out so late. There could be a fair number of mail-in ballots with his name on them. Still, I'm not going to repeat my late fascination with Buddy Roemer in New Hampshire based on very little hard data.

As dissatisfied as the polls show the likely voters are with this field - the median count in the five polls for NoneOfTheAbove was 8% - I still think when South Carolina voters step inside those booths today, they will cast their votes for one of the four guys who showed up at the last debate.  Polls have shown voters are paying close attention to the debates.  As a person who believes in democracy, I find that encouraging and discouraging at the same time.

These are my final numbers.  I updated Silver's numbers from his noon Eastern time prediction on Saturday.  I will report back when 100% of precincts report in, which will likely be Sunday morning.

Has None Of The Above peaked?

So here's the first twelve days of January in the Gallup tracking polls.  Mitt Romney, Mr. 25%, is now about to become Mr. 35% for the first time, as the crooked line in green indicates.  Pundits assumed the undecided had ruled Romney out, but this graph doesn't bear that out.  A lot of his gain looks to be at the expense of None Of The Above, drawn in black.  There was also a fading away of the the two top challengers Gingrich and Santorum, while Paul, Perry and Huntsman are steady in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, if None Of The Above is removed.

When the month started, None Of The Above was slightly ahead of Romney, but the undecided fell to fourth and has now risen again to second.  The Republicans really are trying to figure out who can beat Obama, and while most of them are not the political junkies I am, even a passing observer can start having doubts about the rest of the field, especially Gingrich, mean as a snake, and Santorum, kind of a whiny nebbish.  In some ways, I think Huntsman still hasn't been given a fair hearing, but he took a job when Obama offered it, and so to the rabid anti-Obama crowd he's a traitor and cannot be redeemed.

Results for prognostication #2: New Hampshire primary

There are three things about this week's guess that should be noted.

1. I got beat by Nate Silver's guess, 88.8% to 88.2%.
2. I did much better than I did last week.
3. I got Gingrich over Santorum and Nate Silver went the other way.

Here are the final numbers.

Mitt Romney: 39.3% (Silver beats me by 2.9%)
Ron Paul: 22.9% (I beat Silver by 2.7%)
Jon Huntsman: 16.9% (Silver was at 17.0%, I was at 16.7%, so he was 0.1% closer)
Newt Gingrich: 9.4% (We both overshot, I lose by 1.2%)
Rich Santorum: 9.4% (We both overshot, I win by 1.1%)
Rick Perry 0.7%: (Again, we both went high, I win by 0.1%)
Buddy Roemer: 0.4% (Silver was silent, I went high and lost 0.8%)


I learned several things this week, mainly about thinking like a mathematician instead of thinking like a statistician, which is my serious advantage over Silver in the long run.

1. Don't chase a single data point.  I was impressed by Buddy Roemer's results in one poll and changed my prediction because of it.  I should not do that and won't do it again.
2. There's no point in being precise when you don't know what you are talking about.  The data I collect is to the nearest percent.  I shouldn't work with numbers to the nearest tenth of a percent.  My predictions will be to the nearest percent.  It giveth and it taketh away, but for the most part, it will giveth to me.  I might decided to round to the nearest half a percent, but no closer.  The data doesn't deserve it.
3. Keep track of the recent, ignore ancient history.  Silver tweeted that every winner broke the 40% barrier since 1972.  This is because he's a statistician.  Completely meaningless number and somebody who isn't fooled by useless hard work could see through it in a fraction of a second.

There is no primary Tuesday.  The next test is a week from Saturday in South Carolina.  I will wait until I've checked the most recent polls on the day of the election but will post by blog call and my tweet long before the polls close. This is what Silver does, so it puts us on an even footing.

With no false modesty, I'm better than Nate Silver and I really do believe I will beat him at this in the long run.  I could use an old cliche and say I've forgotten more mathematics than he will ever know,  but once again with no false modesty, I haven't forgotten it.

He's a statistician. I'm a mathematician. I outrank him.

Prognostication #2:The New Hampshire Primary - UPDATE Tuesday morning for Nate Silver's final picks

 It's a Monday before a primary, so it's time for Matty Boy to polish off the crystal ball and make his prediction for the percentages for each of the candidates running for the Republican nomination in the New Hampshire primary. Michele Bachmann dropped out, so it becomes slightly easier, but it is still wild and wooly and no walk in the park.

In previous elections, I would check out the most recent polls and find the median, but that's tricky to do when six people are still in the race. I also have new fun toy, the tracking poll.  The main reason most prognostications in Iowa sucked so bad was that no poll showed Santorum way over 20%, but many did show his stock was rising.  The Suffolk tracking polls shows Huntsman's stock is rising steadily, while Romney has been losing nearly four percentage points a day. So what I did is average out the trends over the past three days and take that trend poll as one of my data sets and the most recent poll that wasn't a trend poll as the other data sets.  I scrubbed out the None of the Above - at least to an extent - and these are my numbers. I also look at the raw data and noted that Buddy Roemer is out-polling Rick Perry in the Granite State and too that into account.  Nate Silver's latest picks are in parentheses. Unless he mentions Roemer in a later tweet, I'm going to be a sport and put his None of the Above numbers on Roemer.

First: Mitt Romney 35.6% (38.5%)

Second: Ron Paul 21.3% (18.6%)

Third: Jon Huntsman 16.7% (17.0%)

Fourth: Newt Gingrich 12.8% (11.5%)

Fifth: Rick Santorum 11.2% (12.3%)
Sixth: Buddy Roemer 1.3% (0.9%)

Seventh: Rick Perry 1.1% (1.2%)

Nate numbers are final on Tuesday morning.  Currently, he's bullish on Mitt, Santorum, Huntsman and Perry. I expect over-achieving by Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and now Buddy Roemer. I readily admit I can't be sure about the Gingrich-Santorum struggle for fourth and fifth.  All my indicators favor Newt, but I'm just a blogger in my living room and Nate Silver works for the New York Times.

Still, if he gives me a call and wants to put money on this, I will take his bet.  Eagerly.

Wednesday morning I will give the results. I beat Silver by the narrowest margin in Iowa when rounding to the nearest tenth of a percent, 83.8% to 83.7%. I expect we will be closer to 90% if not over this time.