Romney got owned by Gingrich

When Associated Press finally join the other news organisations a whole half hour after the pools close you know the exit polls had to be clear. CBS and Fox had taken all of 4 minutes, ABC and CNN eight.

As I write this with 85% of the results reported the result in South Carolina is (final result in red):

• Newt Gingrich 40.4% 40.4%
• Mitt Romney 27.1% 27.8%
• Rick Santorum 17.4% 17.0%
• Ron Paul 13.4% 13.0%

That is as much of an owning of a state result as Romney managed in New Hampshire. In fact it is more so. But then like New Hampshire the winner came from a neighbouring state.

So where does that leave the Republican party nomination race as they head to Florida.

First up Gingrich has the momentum, but as was pointed out in the coverage I heard he is not on every state's ballot at the moment. He says that if he is nominated he will challenge Obama to seven three hour dabates. He is talking like a winner after tonight, he is talking about taking on Obama not his opponents. 

Romney took a bit of a pasting here. Before his supporters knew the cameras were live you saw the frowns. He outspent Gingrich with $2.4m of ad buy to $612,000. So although he is getting his message out there one thing is lacking. The exit polls revealed that he had lost his lead in who do see most likely to beat Obama in November. That honour now goes to Gingrich, possibly because of the way he ended up swinging from the start of the debate on Thursday, when a week ago that was Romney. 

Romney also came out swinging at Gingrich saying that as he'd never run a state or a business. The counter punch came when Newt said he was the only speaker in the supporters' lifetimes that had supervised four consecutive balanced budgets. The fight is on.

Rick Santorum has done well enough to stay in the race. His speech was one that would allow him to be an asset to whomever happens to win this race. Indeed he opened in praise of his colleague in the House of Representatives. As I said earlier if he didn't put up a good position here he may as well pack up and head home. As it is he has done enough to keep on with the fight. He will be waiting to see if Romney and Gingrich manage to destroy each other in the crossfire they are aiming at each other, he may well be the man to pick up the pieces and be the compromise candidate if things get so nasty as to make both of them a political liability.

As for Ron Paul, this was Christian country and his liberal message may not have gone done well with some of these southerners. But he carried on and on and on in his speech with his economic vision. However, he is the only man left in the race who has not yet won a statewide poll.  He said he will carry on, there are some caucusing states coming up where he has done well. He will still have picked up delegates here and as he said in his speech, before giggling his giggle, winning delegates is the name of the game. Wow! How insightful.  

So all four are left in, nobody was knocked out yet and this race is far from over and may well get even nastier in the weeks ahead. If it does it could still stir things up even more. But tonight Romney was owned by Gingrich. At point I tweeted that the Romney gap was closing....but only between him and Santorum as Gingrich edged further ahead as the results mounted up.

Polling day in South Carolina

It's been a week that one candidate's ex-wife claimed he wanted an open marriage. Another seemed to either lack or have the business acumen that made him successful as he stumbled over his tax returns. One was no longer strong enough to carry on and you didn't need to go to church to know that. One was actually ignored by the moderator in a debate (though the crowd booed that oversight). The one who speaks Chinese bowed to the inevitable and stopped his campaign. The other may have been declared winner in Iowa and looked deeper into the issue of fundamentalist Islam in a more thoughtful way that most GOP candidates before him.

In South Carolina voting is under way is what is heating up to be a GOP race. There are only four men left Mitt Romney who won in Iowa and New Hampshire, Rick Santorum who came second first in Iowa but performed poorly in New Hampshire, Ron Paul has shown strongly in both and Newt Gingrich who has come close to winning some counties but hasn't done so...yet.

Since 1980 the winner of the GOP South Carolina Primary has gone on to be the Republican nominee for President. So what does today hold for them all?

Mitt Romney picked up the endorsement of Jon Hunstman when he stepped aside on the 15th. He is still seen as the one to beat by the others and is running neck and neck with one of his rivals this time Gingrich. However, in the debate on Thursday night there were yet again concerns that the successful business man is using off shore banking to keep his taxes below that of the average working American. While this may be shrewd business practise in the world of politics it is seen as tax evasion especially to the Reagan Democrats that he seems keen to bring back from the Obama fold.

Newt Gingrich  has ridden the wave of his marital issues. Of course his marital issues are not so much the problem as at the time his second wife said he was suggesting an open marriage he was calling for a special prosecutor into the affairs of the man at the White House, Bill Clinton. So it smacks of hypocrisy. But he is doing just what he needs to do to keep his hope alive, a win or strong second here will keep him in the race. He picked up the backing of Rick Perry when he dropped out and Sarah Palin, though he did promise her a position once she came out in support, which may smack against the constitution and a promise of appointment by candidate.

Ron Paul will no doubt by the end of today be saying that this year the trend since 1980 is there to be broken. Not least because there is proportionality in the delegates this time rather than winner takes all. In all possibility even if Gingrich wins here today he would still be second in the number of delegates. He's ticking along with his libertarian take on what is needed to beat Obama and his $1 Trillion cuts in Washington spending by slashing 5 Departments he sees as superfluous is gathering momentum with a certain electorate.

Rick Santorum  may well be wishing that the eight Iowa districts that forgot to call in their results in the caucus had done so before New Hampshire. Then he would have been taking on New England's son having already beaten him once. As it is he trailed in behind the other 3, if only just behind Gingrich. He hasn't gone for the full out blood path that Romney and Gingrich seem to be playing on each other and Ron Paul. maybe it is true that the nice guy can't win, especially in the GOP. However, the fact that he is still here after some of the former front runners Bachmann and Perry have dropped out shows there must be some fight in him somewhere. If he stays in for the next stops on the itinerary he will have to bring it to the table and get back to the top of the lists to stay in this race. Of course not everywhere can be won by shaking every hand like Iowa and he is lacking the big financial backers to allow him to compete on a  even footing.

So after today at least three if not all four will probably still be feeling they have a chance to win this thing, as we head off to the sunshine state of Florida, where there is a scheduled debate on Monday night.

The Maps of Iowa Counties and what they say about Romney and Santorum

Last night I stayed up, almost to the end of the Caucus results in Iowa, it was 99% declared and at that point we knew it was going to be no more than 100 in it either way, but I just ran out of stamina and fell asleep. In the end Mitt Romney won by 8 votes over Rick Santorum both on 25% of the Caucus.

I was sitting there with 10 taps open in Chrome including two maps. One from WYNC spliting the various counties by demographic and Google's in which you could drill down to see the strength of each candidate across the counties. In fact at times Newt Gingrich had the lead in two of the northern counties simultaneously (Winneshiek and Mitchell), Michele Bachmann held an early lead in Howard County and Rick Peryy held leads in four counties at various times of the evening. I was following a number of live feeds from the Guardian and BBC here in the UK to several stateside including a Cover It Live forum, plus of course all my friends on Twitter, following either Iowa or the hashtag #iacaucus was just impossible there were more people Tweeting that Republicans who Caucused* in Iowa.

One of the tabs I did have open was the webcast from KCRG the ABC affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Ia, nothing like getting the information straight from Iowans who knew where the significant counties were, had reporters at numerous of the caucus centres including the 63 precinct venue at the University of Northern Iowa's, Dome.

There was one point early on before too many votes had been declared (about 7:45pm local time) that they said that there were people in England and Denmark watching them and saying hi on Twitter. So I did. The end result was within minutes Northern Ireland got a name check, and not for the first time but twice more as they handed over to different news anchors I got bundled up with the other two nations again.

If you just looked at the map by who won each county you'd have thought Santorum had walked it. Of the 99 he won in 62 of them, Ron Paul in 18,  Romney in 17 and Rick Perry in 2.

But these heat maps showing the proportion of the top two's support helps to explain the story.

Santorum

Romney

What this shows is that in the big metroplitan areas like around Polk County (Des Moines and surrounding), Iowa City and Cedar Rapids Romney scored a lot better than Santorum. In the western metropolitan area around Sioux City even though Santorum did well so too did Romney. In other words Romney did well in the urban areas taking most of the most populace counties. Santorum who personally was in each county twice scored well in the smaller counties where the personal approach obviously worked for him.

I think I shall try and do it all again next Tuesday for New Hampshire though I wonder if it will be as exciting with the former Governor of neighbouring Massachusetts being Romney. However, as the Iowa born Bachmann now a Congresswoman in neighbouring Minnesota can't come better than 6th here you wonder how long she will stay in the race. Already Rick Perry who actually came ahead of her is considering his future in race with Santorum appearing to take up the mantel of the Christian right.

Update as I was writing this Bachmann announced she was suspending her Presidential campaign.

* Yeah through the night I heard or saw this used as a verb extensively.

Iowa Caucus but what news from the Hamburg Inn's Coffee Beans

The Iowa Caucus tomorrow kicks off the race to select Presidential Candidates the polls are saying that Ricky Santorum is gaining on Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in what is statistically as three way tie (while the other Republicans are polling low). However, what many are asking is what is happening over at Hamburg Inn #2 in Iowa City. It has been held since the 80s and replicated in The West Wing. Here is a look at a report from the 2008 Election Campaign Caucus when both fields were wide open.



But what of 2012?

Well Hamburg Inn #2 has seen action from a Gay Robot before Christmas when Michele Bachmann turned up to try and up her jar of coffee beans. Although as you watch the following you'll see that a police officer seems to threaten the Gay Robot's First Amendment rights. He says, "If you go back in you will be facing some additional issues."



It didn't get any better for Bachmann as this next clip shows in the same venue.



As for the Coffee Beans the runes that seem to have been pretty accurate for Reagan, Clinton and Obama amongst others there is little news over the last few days there may be more later today, if so I will let you know. But 5 days ago they were saying it was close between Romney and Paul before the latest surge from Santorum.

Here is a song about the White House wannabes.



Of course the Iowa Caucus is not a great indicator of who is going to win. But it will be a good indicator to a few of the candidates that they are not going to win.