11 notes &
Here’s a little context on the news that Santorum is now running ahead of Romney in national polling and (it is implied) could therefore win the race. This is a graph of the rolling average of the national polls for the GOP nominee since the race began; Romney is the purple line. Here’s where that line was crossed.
- Perry pulls ahead, 8/24
- Perry falls behind, 10/4
- Cain pulls ahead, 10/20
- Cain falls behind, 11/11
- Gingrich pulls ahead, 11/21
- Gingrich falls behind, 1/4
- Gingrich pulls ahead again, 1/24
- Gingrich falls behind again, 2/3
- Santorum pulls ahead, 2/13
The only distinct pattern in all of this is: Romney maintains steady support, everyone else pulls ahead, peaks, and falls back down. I understand why Santorum’s lead is being reported as, like, “news,” in the sense that it’s new or threatening or implies a future different than the past. I don’t see the evidence that it does, at least based on this metric.
I’m not convinced that the current “Santorum surge” is going to prove any more lasting than Perry, Cain, or Gingrich’s did, but one key difference is that during Perry, Cain, or Newt’s surges, no one was voting.
But now people are voting, so a surge can matter, even if it subsides, because unlike a silly September fling with Herman Cain, Santorum can actually pick up some delegates along the way. And media narratives like “Santorum wins 4 states in a row” have a lot more power than “Santorum leads 4 polls in a row.” Right?
Romney’s money-hose is going to be pointed at Santorum at full volume now, so it will probably render this moot, but I don’t think that comparing the current Santorum surge to the pre-voting ones is a real apples-to-apples comparison.
