Quinnipiac poll: Santorum leads Ohio by 7

[Grace62]

"Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum shoots to the top among Ohio likely Republican primary voters with 36 percent, followed by 29 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich runs third with 20 percent, while Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul gets 9 percent.

Three weeks before the March 6 primary, 50 percent of likely Republican primary voters say they might change their mind. This first survey of likely voters can not be compared with earlier surveys of registered Republicans.

President Barack Obama would get 46 percent of Ohio registered voters, to Romney's 44 percent if the November election were today, similar to the 44 - 42 percent result in a January 18 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. Obama tops Santorum 47 - 41 percent and beats Gingrich 50 - 38 percent in general election matchups."

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and...aseID=1706

[beagledave]

Boy, March 6th. That's an eternity in this election cycle.


I still wonder if Pawlenty doesn't bang his head on the wall late at night.

[cbelt3]

Dunno about ads and whatnot. I'm avoiding the media and the phones during this cycle. Although the damn phone calls from illegally spoofed caller ID numbers REALLY piss me off. And ALL of them are that way. Hellooooo.... FCC ? Youse guys doing your jobs out dere ?

[August West]

I'm not a great fan of Quinnipiac. It always seems to me that they are more exacting in describing their accolades than in highlighting their methodology. It seems to me that if they wish to teach polling, they would emphasize transparent methodology as a cornerstone of their efforts. Sorry for the thread hijack, but I've been frustrated in the past trying to examine their polls.

[Grace62]

beagledave wrote:
Boy, March 6th. That's an eternity in this election cycle.


I still wonder if Pawlenty doesn't bang his head on the wall late at night.

It is a way off, but although winning MI would be psychologically important to either Rick or Mitt, Ohio is a more important contest.

Obama is up 16-17 points over any Republican in MI, I don't see that becoming a swing state. Ohio on the other hand is very much a swing state and the GOP needs to see who is popular there, because they need that state if they are going to win in November.

[BCam]

The OT states: "among Ohio likely Republican primary voters with 36 percent".

So here is what I want to know ...
How many total "likely Republican primary voters" are there in Ohio?
What percentage of the actual population of Ohio is involved with this?

I think the main stream media inflate these "primary" stories to higher levels of relevance than they actually are. How else would they sell papers, or how would FOX and MSNBC fill their 24 hour news cycle?

Why not a story like - Here's how many Registered Voters voted in South Carolina's Open Republican Primary in 2012.

Total SC Registered voters in 2012 = 2,804,231
Total votes cast in Republican Primary = 603,770 (21.5% of Registered Voters)

Gingrich, 241,508, 40% of R, 8.6% of total SC Voters
Romney, 167,848, 27.8% of R, 5.9% of total SC Voters
Santorum, 102,037, 16.9% of R, 3.6% of total SC Voters
Paul, 78,491, 13% of R, 2.7% of total SC Voters

So, Newt Gingrich "won" South Carolina with 8.6% of possible votes. Not a landslide victory by any means. Establishment Republican favorite Romney garnered only 5.9% of possible votes.

I don't usually vote Republican and I live in California. The California Primary is June 5, 2012. For Republicans who DO live in California, what actual chance does their vote have in determining who the Republican candidate will be in the General Election?

I think there's something wrong with the Primary system.

[$tevie]

There's something WAY wrong with the Primary system. I think we had better candidates back when cynical political professionals sat in smoke-filled rooms and chose them for us. Even Barry Goldwater looks like a mensch to me now, compared to what we see these days.

[Dennis S]

I don't think it was the smoke-filled rooms that produced the better candidates. I think it was probably a better process, but the problem is, there are fewer good candidates now. Maybe it's because we're older and wiser, but Santorum compared to Ike? Come on.

[Grace62]

I agree that the primary system needs reform. The trouble is that you have to get the parties to agree on something, and we see how that goes. There are lots of proposals out there.

The primary rules for '12 are quite different from '08 due to both state-level party changes that were made and lawsuits regarding who can participate.

However, whatever system we have in a current year is what we have. Because voters choose to participate at low levels, that doesn't make it meaningless or unimportant, those are the people who get to pick the candidates because they elect to participate. I don't think there has ever been a time when voter turnout for primaries was a big number, even in years with "historic" and high-interest candidates, like '08.

So if people want it to go differently, they should lobby their congressmen for change, or at least their state level party chairman.

[$tevie]

Dennis S wrote:
I don't think it was the smoke-filled rooms that produced the better candidates. I think it was probably a better process, but the problem is, there are fewer good candidates now. Maybe it's because we're older and wiser, but Santorum compared to Ike? Come on.

In all seriousness, the two parties were more in the center. And they tried to find candidates who represented the party's platform (remember those? Party platforms?) and who had a serious chance of a) winning and b) being able to perform the duties of the office.

I doubt that voters today have a clue what their party's platform is, let alone how it is determined. They get mad, they go to the polls, and they vote for whoever it is they think represents their anger the best.

Very few people even understand the two-party system these days, or how it used to work before the parties decided to let chaos reign in the guise of The Voice of the People.