Romney Leads in Michigan
According to the latest polls, Mitt Romney has overtaken John McCain in Michigan. Can Romney win? 
According to the latest polls – take them with a grain of salt as usual – Mitt Romney has caught up with John McCain in Michigan and has even overtaken him.
The Politico explains that three polls were recently conducted:
1. “McClatchy/MSNBC poll puts Romney at 30 percent, McCain at 22 percent, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 17 percent.”
2. “Detroit Free Press/Local 4 Michigan poll has Romney at 27 percent, John McCain at 22 percent and Mike Huckabee at 16 percent.”
3. “Detroit News found Romney and McCain dueling for the lead. The Detroit News/WXYZ Action News poll shows McCain with 27 percent, Romney at 26 percent, and Huckabee at 19 percent, according to the newspaper.”
Three polls, two put Romney reasonably firmly in the lead and have McCain down with 22%, while the other one says McCain has 27% support. Michigan is likely to be close, but the polls indicate that Romney’s doing what he has to do: he has to out-maneuver McCain.
We have to take these polls with a (huge) grain of salt, but it’s interesting to see that the polls had McCain leading only a couple of days ago. The trend seems to be that Michigan’s native son, Romney, is surging.
Why is Romney leading? As Hugh Hewitt points out he led McCain “by 2 to 1 among likely voters who called themselves Republicans.” The analysis continued that “McCain owes his solid standing to independents and democrats.”
Hewitt – who is a firm supporter of McCain – writes: “As noted here often –a Republican nominee needs the support of a majority of Republicans, and Romney had that in Wyoming and New Hampshire, and has it in Michigan. McCain’s faux surge is based on anti-conservative votes.”
That’s true. If McCain doesn’t convince the majority of Republicans to support him he won’t win the nomination. Having the support of Democrats and Independents is nice and all but it won’t result in him winning this thing.
Dan Riehl explains what’ll happen if (when?) Romney wins in Michigan: “A Mitt win in Michigan totally changes the race. We have Rudy struggling, Romney could win Nevada, too. He’d have time to at least make a push in Florida from a position of perceived strength, no matter what happens in South Carolina.” As he goes on to say, “a loss in Florida wouldn’t wipe him out before Super Duper Tuesday. That’s when his ability to fund his own campaign would be huge. Given reports from the other campaigns, they can play on February 5th. But they might not be able to play everywhere, making this thing a game of chess.”
It continues to be a fascinating race. If Romney wins in Michigan we can only say one thing: there are still a lot of Republicans out there who can win the nomination.
Conclusion: since there are only two days to go to the Michigan primary not one of the candidates can create a truly big lead. No predictions for me. But… he has an edge over McCain considering McCain’s CAFE-past.
I thought your McCain-CAFE story was very interesting, Michael. In light of it, it doesn’t surprise me that Romney may find his home state of Michigan to be fertile political ground.
In addition, I don’t think that McCain’s negative statements regarding Michigan manufacturing jobs will play well. Romney took a much more positive approach (with no specifics), saying that Michigan jobs should be protected. I suspect he’s an open-market free trader, so I don’t think he’ll become a protectionist. Not sure what he was suggesting really. Still- smart opportunistic politics.
That’s why I posted it, among other reasons, Kreiz. The more the Romney campaign shows what McCain’s record is in this regard, and the way he dealt with the automobile industry, the more support he’ll lose and the more support Romney will gain – that should show in the polls. So McCain’s record basically would explain why many Michigan Republicans aren’t too fond of him. It’s important info because of that explanation.
John Mc Cain has no ties to Michigan unlike Romney who really cares about the state. Vote for someone who is a one of us and great businessman when our economy is bad or vote for a career politician who only cares about you until Jan. 15th? Gee that is a no brainer…a vote for Romney is a vote for your self interest Michigan.
You’re exactly right, Michael (@ 3). It’s just nice to have specific policy differences rather than the uninformed "Mitt’s dad was a popular governor" narrative that we tend to get from pundits. There are actually times when real issues matter- and this may be one of them.
Very well said Kreiz. It makes one wonder about the level of the pundits in America, doesn’t it?
Michael: Have you been reading Ross Douthat’s McCain posts? He makes some interesting arguments:
"So even if self-described conservatives never start breaking McCain’s way, the weakness of his opponents will probably prevent any of them from playing the George W. Bush role from 2000 and sweeping him aside. "
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/gerson_vs_mccain.php
He’s got an update as well, where he suggests that McCain does not have a Republican partisan upper limit:
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/does_mccain_have_a_ceiling_ii.php
McCain will take advantage of Michigan’s open primary- just as he did NH. Presumably this is difficult to gauge, perhaps skewing poll results and reducing their accuracy.