Tomorrow’s Republican presidential primary in Michigan may be a critical juncture in the race for the nomination. Rick Santorum overcame a large deficit here earlier in the process to pull in front of Mitt Romney. Lately, however, Romney’s poll numbers have improved, and now it looks like he may be back in front by the slimmest of margins. This race, which is effectively too close to call, is very important to Mitt Romney if he is to hold onto his frontrunner status. And since this is his home state, he stands to lose much more if he doesn’t prevail than Santorum will if he does.
In Arizona, Romney appears set to win going away after Santorum gave him a scare in polling done mid-February. Here are the latest polls from both primary contests.
Mitt Romney saw his frontrunner status severely challenged by Rick Santorum recently. Polls for upcoming primary battles last week showed Santorum gaining ground on him in Arizona and passing him in Michigan. The latter is considered to be pivotal for Romney since it is his home state.
Over the last several days, Santorum’s momentum appears to have stalled, and Romney looks to be on the rise again. In Arizona, where Santorum cut a 30-point lead to just 5 on Feb 20, Romney has moved out to a double-digit lead in the latest three polls.
In Michigan, the reversal is even more striking because Santorum’s rise there actually put him ahead by 9 points just 10 days ago. Now, Romney has moved back in front by a couple points, and, if the trends continue this weekend and into Monday, he should see that lead extended to several points by primary election day on Tuesday.
The latest Gallup poll testing potential GOP nominees against President Barack Obama shows improving fortunes for the Republicans. Mitt Romney leads Obama 50% to 46%, and Rick Santorum is just one point behind, 49-48. Santorum’s numbers have improved considerably since Gallup’s last poll in late January. That survey showed him down eight to the President.
The Southwestern heat was a fitting atmosphere for tonight’s Republican debate. “Mitt Romney feels the heat in the desert” read one headline. The Yahoo.com article highlighted Romney’s fight to retain frontrunner status. Fox News, on the other hand, focused on Romney’s attacks on Santorum.
Mitt Romney went on offense against Rick Santorum’s record of spending while in the U.S. Senate, accusing his latest Republican arch-rival Wednesday of raising the debt ceiling five times, funding Planned Parenthood and expanding the Department of Education.
In a searing first shot during a fiery debate in Phoenix, Ariz., the Republican presidential primary frontrunner said during Santorum’s watch, spending grew 80 percent of the federal government.
There is movement toward the GOP in today’s update. On the electoral vote front, Mitt Romney
slides ahead of President Obama in Ohio by just 0.17%, reducing the margin of Obama’s projected victory from 126 to 90 electoral votes. The popular vote projection gives Obama a 50.6% to 47.9% advantage.
Bigger news comes from Election Projection’s Senate projections. Former Senator George Allen, Republican, moves ahead of Former Democratic Governor Tim Kaine in Virginia. The additional pickup brings the projected balance of power in the Senate to 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats (including Independent Bernie Sanders) and gives the red team a projected majority in the chamber.
The Michigan Republican primary on tap a week from tomorrow should be an exciting contest that could tell us a lot about the nature of the race for the GOP nomination. Rick Santorum, after giving way to Newt Gingrich’s short-lived run, has once again assumed the mantle of the anti-Romney candidate and has enjoyed a substantial rise in the polls as a result. A Gallup tracking poll put the former senator 8 points ahead of presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney nationally. And in Michigan, Santorum is leading all five most recent polls by an average of 6 points, according to RealClearPolitics.
What’s makes next Tuesday’s race even more intriguing is that Michigan is Mitt Romney’s home state. If Santorum can defeat him there, that would bode well for a very competitive atmosphere for the rest of the primaries. Election Projection still stands behind the prediction that Romney will be the nominee, but a Santorum victory in the Great Lakes State on February 28 would make me question whether that prediction was premature.
This site is brought to you by Election Projection. I have been calculating projections for the Presidential, Senate, House and Governor’s races since 2003 and writing a political blog as well. However, during that time, I’ve never used off-the-shelf blogging software like WordPress. That’s what I’m doing now – boy it is so much easier.
It will take some time for me to get everything set up, so bear with me. By the way, the current projected electoral vote count favors President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney (whom I believe will be the GOP nominee) by a 332 to 206 count. The incumbent takes all the states he took in 2008 except for North Carolina and Indiana.
I hope you’ll come back often as we move through this critical election season.