2012 GOP Presidential Nomination: By The Numbers

Now that the GOP Presidential field has begun to settle (with the notable exceptions of Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and possibly even Chris Christie looming in the mist), it is possible to get an early read on who has a leg up towards becoming the Republican opponent to Barack Obama in 2012.

First of all, the conventional media storyline of Mitt Romney being the frontrunner is certainly true. His position in the polls has remained consistently well ahead of the pack. Still, his lead is not nearly as strong as it would seem. The latest polling averages from RealClearPolitics.com show Romney with a lead of 11.6 over Sarah Palin, who hasn't yet declared her candidacy. Among declared candidates, the closest is Herman Cain, who trails Romney by 15 percentage points.

To put this lead in perspective, at this time four years ago, Rudy Giuliani had a lead of 7.4 percentage points over the next closest opponent, Fred Thompson. He led eventual nominee John McCain by 9.7 percentage points. Mike Huckabee, who would eventually finish second in the primaries, was only just beginning to register with 2.8% support, trailing Giuliani by 23.4 percentage points.

To be sure, there is no way of knowing whether a complete campaign failure the likes of what Giuliani went through is on the horizon for Team Romney. He is more vetted than Giuliani was. Giuliani had never run for office above the level of Mayor. Mitt Romney ran a campaign for President last time around. Still, Romney has the ghosts of his Massachusetts health care debacle and his position flipping on the issue of abortion lurking in his closet.

Is Romney the favorite to win the 2012 GOP nomination? Yes. Would I put down money on it? No. There is still a LOT left to play out.

So who is positioning himself (or herself) to be the most likely alternative to Mitt Romney in the end? I will size up the competition using two different measures. First, I will use an average of support in the 3 most recent polls published. This is the most conventional measure to get at the relative standing of the candidates. At this point in the campaign, though, I would like to control a little for the fact that the frontrunners (as in the case with Giuliani) are in that position at least in part because of a head start in name recognition. Theoretically, if everybody knows your name, even if a considerable portion of them don't like you, you will gain more support than a candidate everybody loves, they just haven't heard much about yet. Further, as the campaign goes on and this advantage is somewhat neutralized (especially in early primary states which are targeted by all of the campaigns in order to increase name recognition substantially), this head start becomes less and less determinative in the early primaries and caucuses.

Using the first method, simple support in the 3 most recent polls, the standings look like this:

1. Mitt Romney - 27%
2. Sarah Palin - 13%
3. Rick Perry - 11%
4. Michelle Bachmann - 10%
5. Herman Cain - 9%
6. Ron Paul - 6%
7. Newt Gingrich - 6%http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
8. Tim Pawlenty - 5%
9. Rick Santorum - 4%
10. Jon Huntsman - 2%
11. Gary Johnson - 1%



Using an alternative method, the standings look a little different. In order to control for limited name recognition, I have created a score which takes the overall support in the 3 most recent polls and divides it by name recognition, as measured by Gallup. In effect, it compares candidates based on what their support would be if they had 100% name recognition. Additionally, it assumes that those that don't know about the candidate are just as likely to support the candidate as those that already do. While this assumption has its faults, I believe the measure still provides interesting insight into the campaign. Using this method, the candidates are positioned thusly:

1. Mitt Romney - 32%
2. Herman Cain - 20%
3. Michelle Bachmann - 14%
4. Sarah Palin - 13%
5. Tim Pawlenty - 9%
6. Ron Paul - 8 %
7. Rick Santorum - 7%
8. Newt Gingrich - 7%
9. Jon Huntsman - 4%
10. Gary Johnson - 3%
** Rick Perry has not yet been included in Gallup polls, therefore there is no similar measure for name recognition. Thus, he has been left out of these rankings.
** Percentages do not add up to 100% because support is inflated for all candidates in order to estimate what it would be if each had 100% name recognition.



Obviously, the true positioning probably lies somewhere between these two measures. Name recognition will not remain low for all of these candidates. It also won't reach 100% for anybody. Therefore, I am going to average the two rankings for all of the candidates to get a medium measure of reasonable expectations. The following table summarizes this.

Support Score Average
Mitt Romney 1 1 1
Rick Perry 3 n/a 3
Sarah Palin 2 4 3
Herman Cain 5 2 3.5
Michelle Bachmann 4 3 3.5
Ron Paul 6 6 6
Tim Pawlenty 8 5 6.5
Newt Gingrich 7 8 7.5
Rick Santorum 9 7 8
Jon Huntsman 10 9 9.5
Gary Johnson 11 10 10.5

So what can we gather from all this? Well, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry have an opportunity to completely scramble the race. In there absence, though, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann are in strong position to battle it out for the anti-Romney spot. In the end, Iowa and South Carolina could serve to decide between these two should Rick Perry or Sarah Palin either decide not to run or enter the race to less than stellar reviews. In the mean time, Romney must hope that he can hold on to the top spot, unlike Giuliani four years ago.

A Response to the President's State of the Union Address

Mr. President,

I, along with many Americans tonight, sat down to listen to your remarks regarding the state of our union. You spoke about the American dream and opportunity, an opportunity which you pointed out has been crippled in recent years. It has been crippled by a struggling economy that is bleeding jobs.

Mr. President, it is clear that the first priority of our government must be to cure what has been ailing our economy. What is not so clear, however, is your prescription.

You call for investment in our future, which seems to mean an increase in spending on education, infrastructure, technology, and health care. You intend to get the money to pay for it from oil companies and the richest 2% of Americans.

While your plan certainly appears to have its political selling points, its effectiveness is unquestionably lacking. We have indeed been spending and spending and spending for more than your two years in office. The stimulus failed, Mr. President. If it had worked, you would not be making this speech tonight. You would not have had a Republican sitting behind you tonight. More importantly, 9% of Americans would not still be out of a job tonight.

Why has your plan failed? It has failed for the same reason that the Soviet Union failed. It has failed because the free market knows better what to do with its money than the federal bureaucracy does. See, what you fail to mention every time you speak of “investing” money in our economy, is that the investment comes, primarily, not from an outside source, but from the economy itself.

What do you suppose the evil oil company executive does with his millions of dollars in bonus money? He invests it! He invests it in his 401(k). He buys a yacht, or a sports car, or a vacation home. Maybe, he gives it to charity or supports his favorite non-profit organization. Regardless, his money is invested back into the economy. What you are doing, by “investing” money, is taking that dollar away from that CEO and, worst of all, it costs money to get it from him.

So, obviously, what you are doing is not an investment, it is manipulation. You feel that you and your government know better what to do with his money than he does. You feel that the United States needs a governing body, a central planning agency to coordinate its economy, and to mandate investments in whatever technologies it deems profitable and utilizing whatever value system it holds important.

That idea may sound good in your head, but it has never worked in practice and most certainly does not line up with the principles of self-government on which this nation was founded. Liberty is the most precious gift that our fathers gave to us. It is a cause for which men and women have fought and died.

What you ask us to do today is to give up that liberty one day at a time for the sake of our economic well-being. What is more, you ask us to do this when history is ripe with examples of countries that have fallen into the “ash-heap of history” for following your proposed way of thinking.

Even further, we are already paying for decades of poor judgment by lawmakers such as you in Washington, D.C., who have piled up more than $14 trillion of debt. That is why we are in the very mess we are in today! You are so quick to point the finger at Wall Street, but the bills that were signed on Pennsylvania Avenue have done more damage to our economy than any Enron executive ever did.

Jobs are moving overseas and businesses are closing in our country not because of a lack of spending, but because of a blood lust for spending on Capitol Hill. Every dollar spent by Congress is a dollar not spent by a business to maximize its profit and therefore ensure its competitiveness and its employees’ job security.

It appears that you have seen the light on this aspect of our nation’s struggles as you promised tonight to end earmark spending and lower corporate income taxes. I am afraid, though, that this is one promise that you will have to show me in action. To this point, you have provided no evidence that your conviction truly lies in reigning in spending.

Under your watch, Mr. President, spending has sky-rocketed on Capitol Hill. You have already in just two years in office allowed the national debt to increase by $3.5 trillion. In your speech tonight, you made no effort to propose any significant cuts in spending, only to take as much as you could from oil companies and the nation’s wealthiest individuals in hopes that they can financially support the monster in Washington, D.C.

Mr. President, they can not support it any longer. And, I have to say, it is simply degrading the way you championed the idea of a spending freeze as a cure to our ills. After two years of out-of-control spending, when our nation has swelled its spending to a new height far beyond any that the world has ever seen, you stood there with a straight face, acting like you were the responsible one in the room, and asked Congress not to spend any more than they already are for the next five years. I suppose in Washington, D.C., not spending more is your idea of a spending cut.

Mr. President, our nation needs more than a spending freeze and an earmarks ban. We need to get serious about the real problems in our budget: Social Security and Welfare. We need to get serious about doing more than just reducing the deficit; we need to work towards eliminating the national debt.

Mr. President, our economy is bleeding and our government is failing. The time for band-aids is over.

Mr. President, the state of our union is decline, but not terminally so. This is a time for principled leadership. It is the time for men to stand up and say enough is enough.

We can sail this sinking ship to calmer seas, but we must first repair the breach in the hull. We can not continue to allow more and more spending to weigh down our country and, ultimately, swallow us whole. We can no longer afford to ignore the leak.

Mr. President, I believe that you and I share the same goal: to see the United States prosper again and ensure that this and future generations of Americans are provided the greatest opportunity on earth to achieve their American dream, not to inherit an overwhelming debt. We must make real sacrifices, not superficial ones in order to achieve that goal. I hope that you are willing to take that action. If not, I know that our nation will find the right leader to take it down that path when the time comes.

I know that because ours is a special nation, a nation conceived as a city on a hill, a guiding light of freedom. As such, we are the special province of God and, just as He has blessed us throughout our past, He will continue to bless us so long as we honor Him.

God bless America!