RandySF
RandySF's JournalPredictions for Maine?
I'm going to err on the side of caution and say that Romney wins it. What do you think?
PPP Polling director skeptical of predicted Romney win in Maine.
Maine is the first of the Republican contests we haven't conducted a pre-election poll for. The main reason for that is the lack of a single voting date. Caucuses have been held in the state over the course of the last week and that makes polling pretty much impossible- some folks have already voted, some haven't, etc. The other reasons we didn't poll it are exceptionally low turnout and the fact that the GOP race has undergone a fundamental shift from the start of Maine's voting period, when Mitt Romney was on the top of the world, and the end where we've now seen Rick Santorum take the lead nationally.
It's generally assumed Mitt Romney will win tomorrow, largely because it's another New England state, but I'm a little skeptical. We did 3 Maine Republican Presidential polls between October of 2010 and October of 2011. Here's what we found:
-Romney doesn't have great favorability numbers with Maine Republicans. He was at 51/37 when we polled in October and 47/31 when we polled in March. Those favorability numbers right around the 50% mark are pretty comparable to what we found for him in Minnesota and Missouri last weekend, where of course he got crushed. Maine GOPers are definitely not in love with Romney.
-Romney never led in any of the 3 Maine Republican polls we conducted. He was 2nd behind Herman Cain in October, 4th behind Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin in March, and 2nd behind Sarah Palin in October of 2010. All 3 of those polls made it clear Maine Republicans were looking for a more conservative alternative to Romney. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum don't appear to have much or any organization in Maine and a lot of Maine's caucuses had already been held before the Santorum surge began though, so I don't know if that desire for an alternative will really end up showing in tomorrow's results.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/maine/
Why Romney might underperform in MI from 2008.
Yes, Michigan is Willard's home state, but he also went into town as the conservative alternative to McCain. It is also an open primary. MI Democrats also had nothing to otherwise vote for and crossed over to give McCain some heartburn. Fast forward to 2012. Michigan is still an open state, Obama has no opponent and Rick Santorum may be uniting the conservative wing. Mittens will still win, but I don't think it will be a smashing victory.
Willard running third in Georgia.
ATLANTA - Former Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich is leading among primary voters in the state he represented for two decades, and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum is second in a poll released Friday.
Gingrich gets the nod from 35 percent while Santorum surged into second with 26 percent in the wake of his three primary wins this week in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.
Mitt Romney has 16 percent, putting him in third place a head of Ron Paul’s 5 percent. Another 18 percent were undecided when surveyed by phone Thursday evening.
The poll by Rosetta Stone Communications and Landmark Communications questioned 1,475 people who said they were likely to vote in Georgia’s Republican presidential primary March 6, Super Tuesday. It has a margin of error of 2.6 percent.
http://savannahnow.com/latest-news/2012-02-10/poll-gingrich-santorum-lead-georgia#.TzWeWX3Ei13
Does Michigan present any opportunities for Santorum?
for years, I used to say that it would be the election year a right winger wins the Michigan primary. I said in 1992 that David Duke or Pat Buchanan might be George HW Bush. In 1996, I though Bob Dole might be upended. But it never happened. Bush, Dole and McCain and Romney have all won. So this year, I will play it safe and say that Mittens wins it again. However, I still believe there are regions that present opportunities for Rick Santorum to pick up delegates.
The Downriver Detroit area, south of Dearborn to Monroe, is full of conservative Catholics and working/middle class evangelicals. Warren is still heavily Catholic. Suburban Flint is full of religious right Republicans as are pocket of the Northern Lower Peninsula. Western Michigan might be attractive, but they tend to vote with the establishment and Ron Paul might crimp his style in the Howell area. So what do you think?
Romney is starting to sweat over Maine.
Romney adds stops to meet voters at two caucus sites in Maine Saturday morning
The Maine caucuses have been held around the state over the past week, starting last Saturday, and end this Saturday. No recent polling on the race has been done.
Romney won the 2008 caucuses by a 52%-22% margin over John McCain, at a time when he had emerged as the alternative for conservative voters. But it remains to be seen whether he can hold the state again this year, after Romney's big losses in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses — which he had also won in 2008, for similar reasons, and where conservative voters were now seeking an alternative to him.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-adding-stops-in-final-maine-caucuses-on
UAW prepping for nationwide protests, civil disobedience.
Flint— United Auto Workers President Bob King used the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike to call for "direct action" — including nonviolent civil disobedience — to take back America from the "right-wing Republicans" and "one-percenters" who he says have hijacked this democracy.
King said the UAW would begin training its members and other activists this spring to take part in peaceful, but potentially illegal, protests across America to stop what he called the rollback of workers' rights and civil rights.
"It will take direct action. It will take us being willing to face arrest. It will take us being willing to be part of marches and demonstrations," King told a crowd of some 500 union members gathered to mark the anniversary of the end of the 1937 strike against General Motors Co. that led to the UAW's first national contract. "They are attacking democracy in America. They are attacking the labor movement."
King said the UAW and other groups must prepare to use the tactics of the civil rights movement and the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world to fight for things such as universal health care and "economic and social justice."
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120210/AUTO01/202100428/King-says-UAW-prepping-nationwide-protests?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
CPAC Security Threatens Attendees With Arrest For Watching Protest
Private security guards outside of the Conservative Political Action Conference threatened to arrest attendees who had gone outside the hotel to observe a union-organized protest of CPAC.
"Be good conservatives and go inside," one guard shouted at attendees watching as D.C. police pushed back protestors who tried to approach the hotel after rallying on the street. The guard said they were clearing the outside of the hotel of all people whether they were union protestors or CPAC attendees.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/cpac-security-threatens-attendees-with-arrest-for-watching
Santorum: Contraception 'Shouldn't Be In An Insurance Plan Anyway,'
Rick Santorum is continuing to oppose President Obama's new compromise measure on health insurance coverage of contraception for employees of religious institutions.
"No," Santorum replied, when asked whether he was satisfied, "not at all."
The Huffington Post reports from CPAC:
"This has nothing to do with access," he said. "This is having someone pay for it, pay for something that shouldn't be in an insurance plan anyway because it is not, really an insurable item. This is something that is affordable, available. You don't need insurance for these types of relatively small expenditures. This is simply someone trying to impose their values on somebody else, with the arm of the government doing so. That should offend everybody, people of faith and no faith that the government could get on a roll that is that aggressive."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/santorum-contraception-shouldnt-be-in-insurance-plan-anyway
Obama is either damn brilliant or damn lucky.
I like to think that he picked a fight with the Catholic Church to make his new accommodation look like a moderate shift. And in the bargain, insurance companies must now provide the coverage. He also got the opportunity to stand up on behalf of women and appeal to moderates and independents who use birth control. This was either a stroke of brilliance or pure luck.
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