The race for the Republican presidential nomination for the 2012 presidential election has been underway for most of 2011, yet I’ve avoided the campaign on this blog.
No votes will be cast until 2012, and while candidates have risen and fallen over the last year of campaigning, not much has been achieved. I thought it best to wait until we were closer to some real voting before taking a look at the field.
We are now just over a month away from the Iowa caucuses, when we will begin to see real votes cast and the race begin to narrow into the key stretch which will determine who will be Barack Obama’s opposition in 2012.
Mitt Romney has been the presumptive favourite in the race all along, usually polling amongst the first one or two in the campaign, and dominating the race in terms of endorsements and campaign organisation.
For a variety of reasons, Republican voters have resisted the establishment’s favour for Romney, bouncing around between a number of different alternatives to Romney.
After flirting with Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann, the right has moved between three men who have successively been neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney for frontrunner status: Texas governor Rick Perry, pizza company CEO Herman Cain, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Throughout the race, Romney has been the most consistent candidate, with his polls consistently having him between 16% and 25%, while other candidates have collapsed and jumped in the polls. Yet Republican voters have held out on going to him. Many conservative voters are suspicious of Mormons and Romney has a history of flip-flopping on policies, between his time as Governor of liberal Massachusetts and then his campaigns for the presidency in 2008 and 2011-12.
The first serious threat to Romney, and the most well-credentialed candidate in the race, was Rick Perry. Perry was drafted into the race in August by right-wing campaigners despairing at the poor quality of the opposition to Romney. Perry quickly overtook Romney and reached a peak in mid September.
However, Perry’s campaign hit some snags, with his poor performance in debates and lack of knowledge about key issues. In early October Perry experienced a decline from his lead as Cain rose up out of the pack of minor candidates, and by mid-October Perry had fallen back into the pack while Romney and Cain led.
Cain and Romney were neck-and-neck for the next month. Cain had gained popularity due to his ’9-9-9′ tax plan, but was hurt by bizarre gaffes and a sexual harassment scandal, and in early November began to decline.
Newt Gingrich had been consistently polling second to Romney throughout 2010, until in March 2011 the field became more crowded. His campaign had imploded in mid 2011, with most of his staff quitting amidst accusations of him focusing his energy more on selling his books and DVDs rather than campaigning for President.
He began to surge in early November and by the middle of this month he was in a consistent but small lead over Romney, which has continued up to today.
We will see the first voting at the Iowa caucuses on January 3, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina and then Florida on January 31. I will follow up with another blog post about the early primaries and what they mean for the race.
At the moment Romney remains a strong likely contender for the nomination, but his chances will largely depend on the ability of the anti-Romney forces in the Republican Party coalescing around a single credible candidate. Their choice of candidate could be central as to how the 2012 general election plays out.
The Iowa Caucus being a caucus favours candidates with more committed supporters. I have read that Ron Paul has some of the more committed supporters. Maybe Ron Paul will come first or second in the Iowa Caucus and then pick up the mobile conservative non-Mitt Romney vote in the primaries. A Ron Paul victory would be very interesting and would have some uses on defence and foreign policy.
Theres been some very important news in recent days. Gingrich recieved an important newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire, a state which Romney has consistently been polling well in and seen as vital to his chances of winning the nomination. However in the first couple of post-endorsement polls in New Hampshire, Gingrich has soared into the lead in the state. This could become a huge problem for Romney because momentum is the key. Iowa isnt a strong state for Romney however he’s consistently been polling in the top 3 in the state. The belief has always been that Romney can finish 2nd or 3rd in Iowa, win New Hampshire and be the frontrunner for the important Florida primary and hence the nomination. New Hampshire has been his firewall. However, if polls continue to show Gingrich ahead in New Hampshire, Romneys only chance may well be to win in Iowa to get the momentum he needs to win the follwing states, which will be an almightily tough ask.
You could say that Romney need not worry because he’s been behind in the nationwide polls on a regular basis to each month’s lead Anti-Romney (theres been at least 3 lead Anti-Romneys in the past 6 months or so) only to see them perish as they pressed the self destruct button. But that’s the thing, Romney has been reliant on each months lead Anti-Romney candidate to press that self destruct button. Perry and Cain are poor debaters on the national stage and you could say that they were always going to press that self destruct button, which is why Romney’s campaign never panicked even though they were being beaten in the polls. However, Gingrich is one of the Republican’s most skilled and experienced debaters, and you would be extremely naive to assume or even think that Gingrich will also press the self destruct button. And with Gingrich polling well in an essential state for Romney, you can bet that there’ll be some timid people in the Romney campaign right now. With just over a month to go, Romney may well need something very favourable to go his way such as an important endorsement. And if Gingrich continues to hold the lead in New Hampshire, Romney may have no choice but to go all out and pull off an unlikely win in Iowa.