An Interesting Question

There are three contests today, none of which result in any actual delegates being awarded. There will be some assumptions for Colorado and Minnesota, much like Iowa so we will probably see the delegate summaries on the various news networks toggle in some fashion. Missouri is a complete beauty contest so even less attention will be payed to that.

The one interesting thing that will come out of today will be how the spin goes. If polling is to be believed, Mr. Romney will win Colorado while Mr. Santorum will win Minnesota and Missouri. If you are keeping score, that means that Mr. Romney will have won four contests (New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado) while not-Romney has also won four (Iowa, South Carolina, Minnesota, and Missouri). In the four contests that Mr. Romney has won, it's been a complete blow out, usually with saturation bombing of negative advertising. However, turnout was down a bit in Florida, significantly down in Nevada, and only up a slight amount in New Hampshire. Conversely, turnout was significantly up in Iowa and South Carolina (even though SC was a blowout for Newt).

The turnout numbers will likely be skewed from four years ago as Mr. McCain was starting to settle in on his victory tour by this point but I would still be interested to see if the idea of a proper contest between Mr. Romney and those opposed to him generate higher turnout. If the turnout is low in Colorado (or if Mr. Santorum finishes closer than the 10 point margin he is behind) and turnout is up in Missouri and Minnesota, there could be some discussion among the various talking heads that Mr. Romney hasn't quite sewn this thing up yet. We shall find out tonight.