Mitt Romney’s win in New Hampshire last night was a given the pundit world has talked about for months. Interesting enough though many are calling this the end game and now saying Romney is the nominee. I wouldn’t count on that quiet yet.
Romney has constantly polled best in New Hampshire of all 50 states. Going into last night’s primary his RCP average was at 16.6%, which is eerily close to the margin between him and second place Ron Paul. But Romney’s numbers have been dropping in New Hampshire over the past several weeks. It was only in November Romney was seeing numbers giving him a 30+ point lead, so his support has about dropped in half.
Then we have the big factor in the horse race – the delegate count. Last night’s contest only accounted for 12 delegates (New Hampshire’s delegates was cut in half do to a RNC penalty). New Hampshire is also one of the few states in the GOP primary that isn’t “winner take all” in the delegate race. Including last night’s race, Mitt Romney now has 23 delegates. Ron Paul comes in second with 10 and Rick Santorum is third with 8. But we still have a long ways to go. 1,144 delegates are needed to win the GOP nomination and we start seeing some bigger states coming up in the next couple of weeks. If those races do go to Romney then I think we can safely say he has it, short of some major fubar on the campaign trail (not that unlikely given it is Mitt).
So we can call Mitt Romney the front runner right now, but the field is still highly volatile. Next Saturday is the South Carolina primary, so the candidates get a few added days to ramp things up in the Palmetto state. Up for grabs are 25 delegates, reduced from 50 for going early. Romney currently holds a +10.6 RCP average lead in the race, but that field has been highly volatile in the past few weeks. Gingrich was holding a very solid lead until his collapse earlier this month and a lot of those people are now swinging towards Santorum. That means if Rick gets out there and really hits the ground hard, there’s a chance he could end up winning South Carolina.
Right now there is only one certainty about our next primary – it’s a definite “anyone but Mitt” race.