New Narratives

In the immediate aftermath of Super Tuesday, two narratives seem to be emerging.

The first is that although it is increasingly likely that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee, people (including his own supporters) are not very happy and grow increasingly fretful about how long this primary season is going to last. The main driver behind this seems to be how Mr. Romney is unable to win just about any of the areas that are seen as strong Republican areas (the South and rural areas).

Ohio presents a good example of this. If you compare the county breakdown of last night's primary, it looks very similar to a Republican vs. Democrat breakdown of the state. Romney won Cleveland, Youngstown, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati, which are the areas that normally turn blue. He also won many of the suburban areas around these cities (which better than most Democrats do). Conversely, Mr. Santorum won all the rural areas and the poor working class areas (including Toledo for some reason). In the general election, no matter who the Republican nominee is, almost all the areas won by Mr. Santorum will be won by the Republican. A number of the areas won by Mr. Romney are going to be won by Mr. Obama, although heavy Republican turnout in these areas is going to be important. But the fact that this pattern is repeated in nearly all the states so far, is not giving people in the Republican party the warm fuzzies.

The second narrative that seems to be emerging is that Mr. Santorum's surrogates are close to screaming that it's time for Newt to get out. There is a fair argument for this. If Newt had not been in the race and 2/3 of his support had gone to Mr. Santorum and 1/3 to Mr. Romney (for ease of math), Mr. Santorum would have beaten Mr. Romney in Ohio by 45,000 votes and won Alaska by about 150 votes. He might have even won Georgia to say nothing of padding his vote totals in Tennessee and Oklahoma. Imagine what that would have done to the delegate totals.

Regardless, if Newt wants to stay in and someone is willing to bankroll him, he is free to do so.

Newt's last real argument for viability is coming up in a week. Alabama and Mississippi go to the polls on Tuesday (March 13) along with caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa. If Newt wins those two, it gives him more reason to stay in and say that he is the candidate of the South. If however, he loses those to Mr. Santorum or he syphons enough votes away that Mr. Romney wins and he finishes third, it will be very difficult to justify staying in without admitting that he is dividing the "Not-Romney" vote. He may not care about that and that's his prerogative. We'll just have to wait and see there.

Meanwhile the next contests will be fairly quiet ones. Kansas holds a binding caucus (40 delegates) and Wyoming will officially settle on the allocation of their first 12 delegates at the county conventions. There will also be caucuses in the territories of Guam, Northern Marianas, and Virgin Islands. Each of the territories gets 9 delegates.