Predictions

I'm still not sure what will happen in Iowa on Tuesday. Of course, I hope Mitt pulls it out and is declared the winner of the Iowa Caucus, but I see one of three scenarios happening:

1) Mitt Romney wins in Iowa. Although he is the current front runner according to the Des Moines Register's final poll, it would still be considered somewhat surprising considering what happened there for years ago. This would basically mean that the Evangelicals in Iowa (in proxy for the rest of the country) have decided that the danger to our country of four more years of Obama is a greater risk than that of a Mormon in the White House.

If Mitt wins in Iowa, then follows up with a decisive victory in New Hampshire, I think it will be pretty smooth sailing toward the nomination. The only bump will probably come in South Carolina where I still don't see any possibility of a Romney win.

2) Ron Paul wins in Iowa with Romney a close 2nd. Get ready for a long primary process in this case. Romney will be seen as vulnerable by the Anybody But Mitt crowd and there will be a push to unify under a common candidate. Romney will win in New Hampshire then lose in South Carolina. Whoever does well in SC will be seen as the anti-Mitt who can go all the way. The inevitable drop outs after Iowa (Bachman) and New Hampshire (Huntsman) will help to unify the vote.

3) Rick Santorum wins in Iowa. In this case, it doesn't matter how close Romney is in 2nd or 3rd. A Santorum victory will mean that beating Romney is more important than beating Obama and that the Evangelicals have finally found their Huckabee this time around. The whisper campaign will have beaten the spoken one. Romney will continue to push on, but as he loses SC, he will never be able to get above the 20-25% mark and will not get enough delagates for a victory.

A final comment:I like Rick Santorum. I could definitely support him as my Senator or Representative, but I don't see the leadership abilities that Mitt Romney has that we need in a President. I don't think his recent surge is a vote of confidence in his leadership or electability, but just a continuation of the Anybody But the Mormon Scenario from my last post.

The 20%-Flavor of the Month Voters

There is a very interesting research paper done by David Thomas Smith titled: Mitt Romney, anti-Mormonism, and the Politics of religious difference in the United States. In this study, Smith analyzed the data from a 2007 Pew opinion poll about Mormonism and Mitt Romney. He didn't just look at the percentages and averages, but looked at whether there was any correlation between peoples' opinions about Mitt Romney and their perception of Mormonism as a Christian religion.

Now, if you ask most potential Republican primary voters who don't support Mitt Romney why they don't support him, they rarely will say that it is because of his religion. A few will say that, but most won't. They give a number of other reasons (flip-flopping, too liberal, too slick, the whole dog on the roof thing, etc).

But the research basically came down to this: Typical Republicans who believe that Mormons are Christians supported Romney in about the same number as those who didn't have an opinion on Mormonism. Thats your base line But those who felt that Mormons are not Christians were much less likely to support Romney than the average. When Smith looked at all the correlating factors, he found that the #1 indicator of whether or not someone would support Mitt was there opinion about Mormons.

I think this goes a long ways toward explaining what is happening in the polls.

• There is a core of about 25% of the Republican voters who are supporting Mitt.
• There is another percentage (I think about 20% that is undecided about any of the Republican candidates.
• There's 10% percent who support Ron Paul (a very loud, active percentage - hence the straw poll victories, but still only about 10% of Republicans)
• Another 25% are split between the other candidates (Gingrich, Perry, Bachman, Huntsman, Santorum, Cain)

That leaves 20% who are causing the Flavor of the Month phenomenon. The are the ones who are saying, "We need to beat Obama, so we'll vote Republican, but please don't let make us vote for the Mormon. There's got to be someone else."

So they throw their support behind Bachman and that adds to her 5% and she surges to 25%.

Then they realize that she can't beat Obama, so they get all excited when Perry enters the race. He's one of us, an Evangelical! Bachman drops back down to her 5% and Perry surges to 30%

But they see his performance in the debates, find out his positions on immigration, etc and abandon him.

Now it's 9-9-9 time, and they run over to the Herman Cain camp boosting his numbers up. Add to that the ones who actually abandoned Bachman and Perry and you see Cain all the way up to 30% as well. I don't know how long that will last. The problem right now is that there is no where left for them to go. (remember them begging for Chris Christie?)

I don't think that this 20% will ever support Romney in the primaries. I think what will happen is that most of the Undecided voters will be split between Romney and whoever is the non-Mormon-Flavor-of-the-Month at the time of the primary.

But the big advantage that Romney has is that his 25% core isn't going to leave. That number is only going to get added upon as other candidates drop out. The 30% supporting Cain right now aren't long term committed Cain supporters. They already jumped from Bachman to Perry to Cain, and they'll drop him just as fast when they realize that he has no prospect of winning.