Let The "Race" Begin

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I think that just made Gingrich the leader at the moment, though. I think a lot of GOP voters hate Mitt Romney's guts. Of course, if it got to the point of choosing between him and Obama, I guess most would stick with the party line, but it seems that right now, a lot of voters on the right would really like the GOP frontrunner to be someone not called Mitt Romney.

Of course, that's just my perception of the matter. Maybe things are a lot more complex, I can't really tell from here .

 

Be thankful it's not here...and I thought I would never live to say that....

 

Eh, I'm pretty sure that here isn't so much better. Cheer up - things could be so much worse!

 

It's hard to say, up to this point there really isn't a frontrunner. If you go just from the polling, it's Mitt Romney. Hermain Cain is a fairly close second, while Gingrich is a close third. Perry is now a distant fourth. Gingrich has never even reached 20% in the polls, so calling him the frontrunner seems a bit of a stretch. That said, the latest polls show Romney and Cain in the low 20s, Gingrich in the high teens, and Perry right around 10%.

Given that polls typically have a margin of error of around 4% or so, it's not inconceivable that Gingrich is actually ahead (say the polls estimate him as 4% too low, and Cain and Romney 4% too high). Still, the larger point is that no single candidate is in the driver's seat, although I would still say Romney is the favorite to win the nomination at this point.

Of course, it is also helpful to look at specific polling in the early voting primary states. Iowa is first, and Romney does not poll well there. Herman Cain's Iowa numbers are somewhat better than his national numbers. But New Hampshire is second, and that is one of Romney's best states. Things would have to go very, very wrong for Romney to not win New Hampshire. As we look down the list after that, we have South Carolina, where Perry has very good numbers, although Romney's are certainly not bad, and Gingrich is over-performing his national polls in Florida, which is 4th on the list.

While things might be very interesting if four different candidates win each of the first four primary voting states, that isn't likely to happen. Instead, we're much more likely to see an upset somewhere, and whoever gets upset, their campaign is in real trouble. To use Romney again as an example, it's not the end of the world for him if he loses in Iowa, but he's in big trouble if he follows that up with a loss in New Hampshire.

One thing is pretty clear though - while the list of candidates that lose the first state (Iowa) and still go on to win the nomination is long (to use 2008 as an example, Mike Huckabee won Iowa), there has never been a candidate that lost all of the early voting states that still managed to claim the nomination. So if you look at the first four - Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida - we're likely to winnow the field of candidates quite a bit after those states vote.