Decisive Moments of the Campaign, Part I

As we continue our restrospective of the 2012 Republican primary, we would like to put a spotlight on several key moments of the campaign. An event may be considered "decisive" if, having gone differently, it likely would have altered the final outcome of the primary--or at least significantly changed the trajectory of the campaign. The events described will be listed roughly in chronological order. Since events further down the road have less potential to cause change (due to delegates being "locked in," etc.), they may be considered somewhat in order of their decisiveness, as well.

Candidates Choose Not to Run (May 14th - October 4th). Each presidential primary campaign is unique because the dynamic of the playing field is determined by who is playing. Generally speaking, if a politician is capable of winning the presidential nomination--and particularly if he's likely to win--he will run. For various reasons, a number of serious potential competitors opted not to run this season. In the case of three men--Mike Huckabee, Mitch Daniels, and Chris Christie--their absence was decisive. Any of the three had a real chance to defeat Mitt Romney. At least one of them, Chris Christie (arguments can be made for all three), was more likely than not going to defeat Romney. If that weren't enough, if any of the three had entered the race, the shape of the race would have been dramatically different, even if Romney ultimately won.

Tim Pawlenty Quits Early (August 14th). According to the Elephant Watcher calculation of the odds, only one candidate who entered the race ever had higher odds of winning the nomination than Romney. That candidate was Tim Pawlenty, who ended up quitting much sooner than anyone else. Pawlenty quit because his campaign was spending itself into debt while failing to get good poll numbers or win the Ames straw poll. Unlike Romney, who had learned from his 2008 run, Pawlenty's campaign was in a hurry, and it acted as though voters were making up their minds during the summer of 2011. They were not. What if Pawlenty had taken a more steady approach? In hindsight, we can see that Pawlenty probably would have beaten Romney. Though he lacked any exciting qualities, Pawlenty had a solidly conservative record and was at least as electable as Romney. In the end, he would have been acceptable to both wings of the Republican Party. When we consider how well Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum did in spite of all their failings, it's pretty clear that someone like Pawlenty, who lacked their weaknesses, would have won.

Mitt Romney Beats Rick Perry in the Debates (September 7th - September 22nd). Though a lot of media attention was devoted to Rick Perry's later "oops" gaffe, Perry had already been defeated during the more decisive September debates. Romney's campaign always considered Perry to be the biggest threat. Perry was the only candidate capable of running a first-class, professional campaign. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum were all running long-shot vanity campaigns. By September, Pawlenty was already out. That left Perry, who owned a Texas-sized chunk of the Republican establishment and donor networks, second only to Romney. During the September debates, Perry was aggressive. He sought out one-on-one battles with Romney and occasionally scored points against him. But Romney consistently out-classed Perry, who had a tendency to make at least one memorable gaffe per debate. Perry also seemed to get worse over time. The third strike, the debate on September 22nd, knocked Perry out. Before the September debates, Perry had a solid lead over Romney in the polls. After them, Romney held the lead.

Rick Perry Says "Oops" (November 9th). Though Romney maintained a lead over Perry from the end of September onward, Perry's catastrophic "oops" gaffe at the November 9th debate still had an important impact on the race. By November, Perry was in a weakened position. However, there was a possibility that he could recover at some point. He might not have been able to win, but he could have played a role as one of the--if not the chief--Anti-Romney candidates. Only voters in the early states paid attention to the September/October debates. Recall that Gingrich was able to bounce back and win South Carolina after early defeats. Santorum, too, experienced a resurgence in February 2012. Supposing Perry had not made his "oops" gaffe, which became the most famous primary debate gaffe in political history, he might have been able to muddy the waters in Iowa, South Carolina, or beyond. Gingrich and Santorum both needed Perry out of the way in order to make their big gains. Without the "oops," Santorum may have been forced to drop out after losing Iowa.

In Part II, we will explore the remaining moments which we consider to have been decisive in the 2012 Republican presidential primary.

The Bain Analysis of Romney's Campaign

Romney

When Mitt Romney worked at Bain & Company, the consulting firm where he started his career, he was taught to examine companies in a particular manner. Bain consultants studied failing companies by accumulating a very large amount of data, and then formulated ideas for how improvements could be made. The consultants debated these ideas, always taking care to support their assertions with data. When Romney planned his run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, he probably analyzed his failed 2008 run in much the same way that he had examined failed companies. Based on the changes Romney made in 2012, what lessons can we deduce he learned from 2008?

Romney has said that one of his lessons from 2008 was that people didn't have a clear idea of what his message was. In 2012, his basic campaign message was repeated over and over: The election is going to be about jobs and the economy, and his private-sector experience made him the most qualified to turn things around.

If you're going to make a pitch to voters, it's a good idea to make sure the voters know what the pitch is. Romney succeeded; some other candidates succeeded, while others failed. Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty may have been the worst at defining a clear message for their campaigns. Rick Perry did a relatively poor job, and his message was quickly swallowed by his disastrous debate performances. Others, like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, eventually defined themselves, but their messages were unattractive. Gingrich's pitch was that he was the best candidate to debate Barack Obama, but it turned out Gingrich wasn't that good at debates. Santorum wanted to focus on the family and values, but most voters weren't interested. Herman Cain succeeded at getting his "9-9-9" message out, but he went too far, defining himself too narrowly.

Another change Romney made in 2012 was to focus all of his attention on one early state, New Hampshire. In 2008, he spread his resources and attempted to land knock-out blows by doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as some later contests. Romney was able to get second place in both IA and NH, but it didn't do him much good. He concluded that taking first place was absolutely essential. Among IA, NH, and South Carolina, his choice was obvious: He had to stake everything on NH. He did put some last-minute resources into IA when the opportunity presented itself, but otherwise he ignored the state. It's no use spreading resources if you don't get any real credit for second place.

What about the manner in which Romney conducted his campaign? For those who followed both the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries, it was apparent that Romney gave better debate performances during his second run. While it should be obvious that debates are important, Romney seems to have put in the extra effort. He may have taken a cue from 2008, when Mike Huckabee vaulted from polling near 0% to taking IA and nearly South Carolina and the nomination. Huckabee had no resources or name recognition, but he did very well in the debates. Others didn't take the debates so seriously: It's been reported that Perry spent almost no time preparing for them, and it showed.

In 2008, the various campaigns treated the primary season like an arms race, spending money long before voters even began paying attention. They had assumed that the primary season would last from early 2007 all the way through early 2008, and they didn't want to be left behind. But they misjudged the voters, most of whom didn't start following the race until 2008. Even the early-state voters didn't take notice until the autumn of 2007, and their engagement really ramped up only by December.

It appears Romney learned that lesson. Rather than blanketing the early states with ads at the beginning of 2011, he ramped up his efforts toward the end of 2011. Most telling was the fact that Romney didn't launch his deluge of negative ads (for which he had become infamous in 2008) until a couple weeks before the Iowa Caucus. He allowed Gingrich to get far ahead in the polls, and then viciously cut him down. By contrast, the Romney of 2008 attacked every candidate who got ahead of him even for a moment, and he made enemies. The Romney of 2012 was perfectly happy to see Cain or Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann do well for awhile, and if they fell of their own weight, he didn't make enemies of them.

The candidate who could have benefited the most from that lesson was Pawlenty. He spent more money than he took in, trying as hard as he could to get traction in early-to-mid 2011. The problem was that voters didn't even notice. Even worse, he spent large sums of money trying to win the Ames straw poll in August. When he failed to win, his campaign was in debt and he decided to drop out--a fatal mistake. Bachmann won Ames, but it turned out Ames didn't matter. In 2008, Romney also spent a lot of money to win the Ames straw poll, and it didn't do him any good, either.

It's conventional wisdom that Republicans always nominate the "next in line." They prefer to nominate the runner-up from the previous primary, it seems (Reagan, Bush Sr., Dole, McCain, Romney). But perhaps the real reason this occurs so frequently is that the candidates learn from the mistakes they made the first time around. In the future, candidates would do well to learn from the mistakes of past candidates, rather than spending time and money making them on their own.

Romney vs. Santorum, Part 3

In parts 1 and 2, we demonstrated the way in which Republican primary voters tend to weigh electability and conservatism to determine their vote between two candidates. How will this play out in the voters' decision between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum? It will probably be similar to the dynamics exhibited in the Romney/Perry and Romney/Gingrich duels. In other words, it will be some variation of Santorum being the more conservative candidate and Romney being the more electable one.

As with Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, when Santorum first got a lot of attention in February, voters gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he had no weaknesses. Santorum surged and defeated Romney in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. His numbers rose nationally, and Santorum began out-polling Romney in Michigan by a large margin. Here's how the voters saw things:

Romney vs. Santorum
Romney and Santorum are equally electable.
Santorum is much more conservative than Romney.
Result: Santorum wins.

The voters' views of both attributes should be unsurprising. While Romney was known as a "Massachusetts moderate" and "flip-flopper," Santorum's conservatism had not been vetted. On the electability measure, Santorum again benefited from a lack of vetting, while Romney had also just come off a damaging gaffe in which he suggested he didn't care about the poor. Romney's electability took a hit for the second time this season (the other being when voters worried he had something to hide in his tax returns). If anything, some voters probably thought Santorum was more electable than Romney.

But, as with other surging candidates, Santorum's rise has prompted more media scrutiny. Romney's attack machine has directed its fire toward Santorum, rightly assuming Gingrich is no longer a real threat. In Michigan, Romney's attack ads have primarily been directed at making voters question Santorum's conservatism.

Will voters buy the idea that Romney is more conservative than Santorum? No. But it's not necessary: Romney only needs to close the gap. Even before Perry's debate gaffes made voters view him as unelectable, Perry was hurt when his conservatism was questioned. Making him appear only somewhat more conservative than Romney did a lot of damage, because it undermined the whole point of the Perry candidacy, which was to be very conservative.

As with Perry, attacks against Santorum's conservatism will be effective, because voters are unaware of Santorum's weaknesses on that attribute. At the debate on February 22nd, Santorum's imperfections were exploited. But at the end of the day, voters will still view Santorum as being at least somewhat more conservative than Romney. Santorum simply appears more genuine.

The battle between Romney and Santorum will come down to electability. Having closed the gap on conservatism, voters will prefer Romney if they believe he is more electable than Santorum. Perry's drop in perceived electability occurred when he self-destructed in the debates. Romney's attacks against Gingrich, in which he painted Gingrich as a flake with ethics problems, were also devastating.

But Romney has not yet rolled out similar attacks against Santorum's electability. Instead, the only electability issues raised against Santorum thus far have come from the media, which have highlighted Santorum's extreme social views, such as opposition to contraception. It's a tricky matter, because Romney does not want to attack Santorum from the left. When Gingrich and Perry attacked Romney from the left by criticizing Bain Capital, it backfired. Still, Romney is currently relying on the media to do some of the work for him. It's never a good idea for a candidate to rely too much on the media.

Prior to the February 22nd debate, Romney and Santorum were roughly tied in Michigan polls. Here's where they stood before the debate:

Romney vs. Santorum
Romney is marginally more electable than Santorum.
Santorum is somewhat more conservative than Romney.
Result: Inconclusive.

If Romney is able to drag Santorum's perceived conservatism down close to his own level (he'll never drag him all the way down) then Romney will have a slight edge. If Santorum's electability comes into question--particularly if he seems too extreme on religious/social issues--then Romney will have a big advantage.

Romney vs. Santorum, Part 2

How will Republican voters weigh the factors of electability and conservatism when deciding whether to nominate Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum? First, we should consider some basics, which should be fairly obvious. The following scenarios form the framework in any two-man race in a Republican primary. Voters make the decision between Candidate A vs. Candidate B; we'll use Romney as Candidate A and Santorum as Candidate B, but they are interchangeable:

Scenario 1
Romney is more electable than Santorum.
Romney is more conservative than Santorum.
Result: Romney wins.

Scenario 2
Romney is more electable than Santorum.
Romney and Santorum are equally conservative.
Result: Romney wins.

Scenario 3
Romney and Santorum are equally electable.
Romney is more conservative than Santorum.
Result: Romney wins.

Scenario 4
Romney is more electable than Santorum.
Santorum is more conservative than Romney.
Result: ?

Note that each scenario has a mirror image made by swapping the names (e.g. the reverse of Scenario 1 is that Santorum is more electable and more conservative, and Santorum wins). Interestingly, the winner in almost every scenario is easy to predict, except for the scenario in which Candidate A is superior on one attribute and Candidate B is superior on the other. As we've said before, history suggests that Republican voters prize electability over conservatism. But the result is not guaranteed as it is in the other scenarios.

To help us determine how the Romney vs. Santorum dynamic will play out, recall the two previous duels that occurred during this election season: Romney vs. Rick Perry and Romney vs. Newt Gingrich. We'll start with Romney and Perry, who were considered the two frontrunners back in August and September of 2011.

The duel between Romney and Perry went through two phases. That's because electability and conservatism are based on voters' perceptions, which can change. As we discussed back in December, candidates repeatedly crashed this season because voters (wrongly) assumed that each new candidate was perfectly electable and conservative--they were unaware of the candidates' weaknesses. When Perry first came on the scene in August, voters assumed he was a perfect conservative, and assumed he was fairly electable, though they may have initially had some concerns about nominating another Texas governor. The voters' thought process went as follows:

Romney vs. Perry
Romney and Perry are equally electable--or fairly close.
Perry is much more conservative than Romney.
Result: Perry wins.

In consequence, Perry skyrocketed in the polls. It wouldn't be the last time Romney was overtaken in the polls by a newcomer. Shortly after Perry entered the race, Elephant Watcher predicted Perry's electability and conservatism would both come under attack. In September, this "two-front war" indeed occurred, weakening Perry. Perry wasn't as conservative as voters hoped, and his debate performances proved he was not nearly as electable as they assumed. By October, voters perceived the race this way:

Romney vs. Perry
Romney is much more electable than Perry.
Perry is somewhat more conservative than Romney.
Result: Romney wins.

Perry took a nosedive in the polls, and Romney was back on top. His frontrunner status in the polls wouldn't last very long. After Herman Cain caught fire and went down in flames in October/November, Gingrich was the next to challenge Romney. As before, Gingrich's duel with Romney went through two phases as voters discovered Gingrich's weaknesses. In the beginning, they assumed Gingrich didn't really have any:

Romney vs. Gingrich
Romney and Gingrich are equally electable--or fairly close.
Gingrich is much more conservative than Romney.
Result: Gingrich wins.

Gingrich took big leads in national polls and polls of every state but New Hampshire. By early December, he was the man to beat. Back in October, Elephant Watcher predicted Gingrich would suffer the same kind of two-front war that Perry had, with attacks against both his electability and conservatism. And Gingrich was even more susceptible to a critique of his conservatism than Perry had been. The attacks against Gingrich were focused in Iowa, where voters had a dramatic change of heart:

Romney vs. Gingrich
Romney is much more electable than Gingrich.
Romney and Gingrich are equally conservative--or fairly close.
Result: Romney wins.

As predicted, Gingrich's numbers tanked. Gingrich finished poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire. But because voters in South Carolina, Florida, and later states were not as tuned in--and because their states were not as heavily campaigned in--Gingrich still got the benefit of the doubt. And prior to South Carolina, questions looming over Romney's unreleased tax returns raised questions about Romney's electability. Here's how the South Carolinians viewed the situation when they went to the polls in mid-January:

Romney vs. Gingrich
Gingrich is more electable than Romney.
Gingrich is much more conservative than Romney.
Result: Gingrich wins.

As one might expect, Gingrich defeated Romney in South Carolina by a wide margin. Romney's campaign decided that in Florida, they needed to recreate what had happened in Iowa. Romney's tax returns were released and demonstrated that he had no skeletons in his closet. Attack ads against Gingrich and more anti-Gingrich coverage from conservative media outlets recreated the "two-front war" against Gingrich's electability and conservatism. Here's what Floridians were thinking when they went to the polls at the end of January:

Romney vs. Gingrich
Romney is much more electable than Gingrich.
Romney and Gingrich are equally conservative--or fairly close.
Result: Romney wins.

Using this method of analysis, we can see that the behavior of voters in this primary season was not strange or erratic as it may have appeared on the surface. How does this analysis apply to the current duel between Romney and Santorum? We will discuss that in Part 3.

2012 Republican Primary in Review: January 2012

Each month, Elephant Watcher recaps the activity that occurred in the Republican primary during the previous month. Follow these links to read earlier recaps: May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

January 2012 was the month of the early primary states. By tying for first in Iowa, easily winning New Hampshire, and decisively defeating his remaining opponents in Florida, Mitt Romney secured his position as the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.

As January began, the situation in Iowa was unclear. Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum all had reasons to be optimistic. Newt Gingrich, who had been leading in Iowa only a few weeks earlier, had been devastated by his rivals' negative ads. With no opportunities to debate, Gingrich could not respond. At last, Santorum was given the chance to be the Evangelical Anti-Romney in Iowa. His surge began at the last possible moment; it was spotted by Rick Perry and Paul, who quickly responded with the first attacks ever made against Santorum.

It was a race against time for Santorum, and he lost. Romney managed to squeak out a win in Iowa on January 3rd, beating Santorum by 8 votes. Santorum's spike in the polls was impressive, but so was Romney's ability to make a last-minute play for the state--one he had largely written off since his defeat there in 2008. A recount later found that Santorum had actually won the state by a handful of votes, but he was unable to get the kind of big win that he needed to propel him above Gingrich elsewhere in the country. Santorum was an Iowa-only candidate. Michele Bachmann fared even worse, and she quit the race.

Romney was expected to win the New Hampshire Primary, where he had dominated the polls all year. On January 7th, the candidates finally returned to the debate stage, but they didn't take the opportunity to attack Romney. He easily won the debate; on January 10th he won New Hampshire just as easily. Santorum and Gingrich tied each other for a distant fourth.

Romney's wins in Iowa and New Hampshire gave him a huge bounce in the polls--even in South Carolina, by far the most anti-Romney of the early states. The media began to speculate that Romney might simply win every contest. Seeing no path forward, Jon Huntsman dropped out of the race.

Gingrich and Perry shifted entirely to the offensive against Romney. Their main line of attack was to condemn Romney's success at Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Although they seemed to be scoring points at first, the attacks backfired: They sounded like anti-capitalist critics from the left, and were forced to retreat.

On January 16th, the first of two pre-South Carolina debates took place. Gingrich was given a prime opportunity to attack the liberal media after one liberal moderator all but accused him of being a racist. In attacking the media, Gingrich looked like a genuine Tea Party conservative--enabling voters to overlook his impure record. But that wasn't all: Gingrich was well ahead of Santorum in the polls, and Perry dropped out of the race to endorse Gingrich. It was clear that if anyone would be the alternative to Romney, Gingrich was it. The Anti-Romney vote coalesced, and Gingrich began to surge in the polls.

On January 19th, Gingrich was able to launch a broadside against the liberal media at another debate, when he was asked about his ex-wife's accusations. As with Herman Cain's sex scandal a few months earlier, it took some time before the issue would sink in and drive women voters away from Gingrich. Meanwhile, Romney--who had been able to defeat the Bain criticism--was badly damaged because he refused to release his tax returns. When questioned about it during the debates, he was evasive and defensive. South Carolina's voters began to question Romney's electability: Was he hiding something that would sink him in the general election?

Gingrich won a landslide victory in South Carolina on January 21st. In response, the media narrative shifted dramatically. Romney was no longer the inevitable Republican nominee. Gingrich had the momentum, it seemed. After being left for dead a second time in the campaign, Gingrich had made a comeback. He retook the lead in the Florida polls, a state Romney badly needed to win.

But the situation was not nearly as dire for Romney as it appeared. Despite having been at a severe disadvantage in South Carolina, Romney had nearly doubled his share of the vote there, compared to his run in 2008. And the damage to his electability argument was very superficial: All he had to do was release his tax returns, which he did the following week. As it turned out, there were no skeletons in his closet. Romney had merely been stubborn in failing to release them earlier.

But the Romney campaign knew they had to turn things around. They pulled out all the stops, pouring millions of dollars into negative ads against Gingrich in Florida. As in Iowa, the attacks had a big impact. But Gingrich's real vulnerability lay in the very thing he claimed to be his greatest strength--his debating ability. As Elephant Watcher predicted, Gingrich was not able to debate very well when actually challenged by his opponents. On January 23rd, Gingrich's performance was lackluster. On January 26th, it was disastrous. Romney won the debate by repeatedly hammering Gingrich, who was unable to respond.

In the days following the debates, Romney soared in the Florida polls. Voters' concerns about Romney's electability and toughness were dispelled. By contrast, Gingrich's campaign was left in ruins. Gingrich began to lash out, complaining about the negative ads while taking an increasingly negative tone in interviews. For weeks, Gingrich had claimed that he was the most electable candidate because he was the best man to face Barack Obama in a debate. But after losing two debates, Gingrich found himself making all kinds of excuses for why he was unable to debate properly. All the while, Florida was drenched in attack ads.

On January 31st, Floridians cast their votes in the primary. Romney won an overwhelming victory. Gingrich vowed to fight on, but the situation seemed hopeless. Florida had been very receptive to Gingrich in the past, and was his best hope for building momentum going into a longer race. Romney, having proven he could destroy Gingrich on neutral ground, looked to be in total control.

Rick Perry Quits, Endorses Gingrich

Perry

Rick Perry announced that he was quitting the race today during a press conference in which he also endorsed Newt Gingrich. Perry was expected to quit the race after the South Carolina Primary this Saturday, in which he would have finished poorly. Perry's decision to quit early was likely based on his desire to avoid the embarrassment of taking last place in Saturday's contest. Now, Perry can at least make the claim that he was acting selflessly to help the conservative vote coalesce behind someone other than Mitt Romney.

How will this change the race? For some time now, Perry has had no chance of winning the nomination. His departure is beneficial to Gingrich, though not as much as one might expect: Perry was already polling in the mid-to-low single-digits. His remaining support would have eroded before voting day in each contest anyway, with most going to Gingrich. This occurred in New Hampshire, where Perry's few points of support went down to 1% on voting day; Jon Huntsman experienced the same effect in Iowa, where his few points went down to 1% on the day of the Iowa Caucus.

Gingrich at least benefits from the fact that someone other than Romney has now been endorsed by a departing candidate. Also, Gingrich no longer has to worry about Perry switching tactics to attack him, though Perry can no longer attack Romney, either. The downside for Gingrich is that Perry's departure raises expectations: Gingrich can't claim he's being handicapped by the conservative vote splitting among multiple candidates. He is only competing against Rick Santorum.

Perry's candidacy was a high-profile failure. Expectations for Perry were high. He was the first candidate to experience a surge and bust, having taken a big lead in all the polls (except in New Hampshire) during late August and early September. At that time, Perry was considered the frontrunner. But Elephant Watcher never gave Perry more than a 21% chance of winning the Republican nomination. Even so, Perry was considered competitive with Romney until the debates in September. As time went on, Perry grew worse in the debates and was decisively defeated by Romney after the third debate. Perry's support declined and was cannibalized by a series of other Anti-Romneys, including Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. Perry completely collapsed after his extraordinary "oops" gaffe during the debate on November 9th. He did not, and could not, recover after that.

Perry is likely to be remembered as one of the worst debaters in American political history. He enjoyed many advantages in the race: Plenty of executive experience, institutional support, money, ease with "retail poliics," and a strong conservative record. But nothing could overcome his poor debate performances. In the future, candidates will recognize the vital importance of the debates, and will hopefully take greater care to prepare for them.

The Campaign Status page has been updated to reflect Perry's departure. Judging by the tenacity of the remaining candidates, this could be the final time the Campaign Status page changes until a candidate secures victory.

Final Pre-South Carolina Debate Tomorrow

CNN will host the latest Republican primary debate tomorrow at 8:00pm Eastern. It will be the candidates' last chance to debate before voting takes place in South Carolina on Saturday. The dynamics of the debate will be similar to the debate on Monday: Mitt Romney is a big favorite to win the nomination and enjoys a comfortable lead in South Carolina polls, and it's up to the other candidates to take him down. The media narrative continues to suggest that if Romney wins in South Carolina, it's all over.

But there is a twist: Newt Gingrich got positive reviews for his debate performance on Monday, and the polls show Gingrich with a substantial lead over Rick Santorum in both South Carolina and Florida. This week, Gingrich said publicly that he would like Santorum and Rick Perry to drop out of the race and endorse him so that the Anti-Romney vote can unite. Santorum and Perry may now be more aware of the fact that it's not enough to take down Romney--they must stop Gingrich, as well. Though Perry knows his own situation is hopeless, Santorum may come to realize that the biggest threat to Santorum is Gingrich, not Romney. If Santorum trails Gingrich by too much, his candidacy will lose all support. But he can survive if he's close enough to Gingrich, even if they both lose to Romney.

It will therefore be important for Santorum to go on the attack against Gingrich. Santorum needs to prove that Gingrich is not the only candidate who can put in a strong debate performance. So far, Gingrich has done well in answering questions, but tends to be a bit weaker when confronted by other candidates in a back-and-forth exchange. Still, as we have seen in previous debates, just because a strategy is optimal doesn't mean a candidate will actually follow it. Santorum may very well continue to attack Romney.

As for Romney, he will once again need to play the role of the gracious frontrunner who is undisturbed by the attacks against him. On Monday, he skillfully parried the attacks against Bain Capital and his history of flip-flopping. He was more hesitant when asked about his tax returns. Since that got some attention, his rivals will surely focus on the tax return issue in tomorrow's debate. Chris Christie, who endorsed Romney and has campaigned for him, has said publicly that he thinks Romney should release the returns. Will Romney be able to effectively answer whether he'll release his tax returns? Romney is undoubtedly preparing for this line of questioning. If Romney has decided that he won't release them, it will be difficult for him to explain why not, without leading voters to worry that he has something to hide.

Finally, Romney must decide whether he should attack Gingrich. Romney has usually preferred to remain positive during the debates, in the belief that as frontrunner the status quo is beneficial. However, Romney may feel threatened enough by Gingrich that if Gingrich attacks him first, he will unleash a counterattack.

Gingrich Leads Santorum: Is It Enough?

Last week, we discussed a scenario in which Newt Gingrich could win South Carolina. For Gingrich to prevail, he needs to have polls showing him develop a substantial lead over Rick Santorum, so that the strategically-minded Anti-Romney vote coalesces behind Gingrich. Along with strong debate performances, a dramatic coalescing of the Anti-Romney vote could put Gingrich over the top. Let's look at the most recent South Carolina polls and see if that scenario is developing:

South Carolina Primary
01/15 Monmouth -- Romney 33, Gingrich 22, Santorum 14, Paul 12
01/15 WeAskAmerica -- Romney 31, Gingrich 18, Paul 12, Santorum 9
01/15 Insider Adv-- Romney 32, Gingrich 21, Paul 14, Santorum 13
01/13 Reuters -- Romney 37, Santorum 16, Paul 16, Gingrich 12
01/13 PPP (D) -- Romney 29, Gingrich 24, Paul 15, Santorum 14
01/12 ARG -- Romney 29, Gingrich 25, Paul 20, Perry 9
01/12 Rasmussen -- Romney 28, Gingrich 21, Santorum 16, Paul 16

Each poll shows Gingrich well behind Mitt Romney. However, Gingrich has a significant lead over Santorum in all but one of the polls (the Reuters poll on January 13th is the sole outlier). Notice also that Rick Perry fails to make the top four in all but one of the polls. If the Anti-Romney voters wish to be strategic, and if Gingrich motivates them enough in the week's two debates, they could rally behind Gingrich.

There are two holes in the scenario right now. First, there has been little or no media attention to the growing gap between Gingrich and Santorum. Recall that in the days before the Iowa Caucus, a lot of media attention was devoted to Santorum's sudden rise in the polls, as the media anticipated Santorum's long-awaited surge. Instead, the media have focused on the fact that Romney enjoys a lead over everyone else. There is still some time: If polls released in the next few days show Santorum dying off, the media will report it and lead to an even greater decline in Santorum's numbers.

The second hole is that Romney is doing quite well. He is not merely edging out Gingrich; he is leading by a significant margin. In some polls, Romney is dangerously close to being ahead by so much that even a significant defection of Santorum votes to Gingrich wouldn't be enough. A significant defection of Perry votes would help close the gap.

Now let's look at the Florida polls:

Florida Primary
01/16 PPP (D) -- Romney 41, Gingrich 26, Santorum 11, Paul 10
01/15 ARG -- Romney 42, Gingrich 25, Santorum 9, Paul 8
01/14 Sunshine/VSS -- Romney 46, Gingrich 20, Santorum 12, Paul 9
01/11 Rasmussen -- Romney 41, Gingrich 19, Santorum 15, Paul 9

Romney has a big lead, but Gingrich has an even bigger lead over Santorum here. Should Gingrich win South Carolina, or take second place there with a big lead over Santorum, he can become the chief Anti-Romney.

Most commentators say that if Romney wins South Carolina, it's all over. But if the Anti-Romney vote remains split in South Carolina, the final test will actually take place in Florida. Unless Gingrich and Santorum are close in South Carolina, Gingrich should be able to get the Anti-Romney vote behind him by Florida. That would be the first time Romney is forced to compete against one rival. If the Anti-Romney vote is united and Romney still wins, it's over, because what more can they do? In Florida, Romney is even closer to the point at which combining the Anti-Romney vote behind one opponent would still result in a Romney victory. Romney's margin would be reduced by a Gingrich win in South Carolina, so it could get interesting.

Who Won the Republican Debate on January 16th?

Tonight, each of the candidates did well in the debate. Newt Gingrich, in particular, got a lot of applause--but so did his opponents. Mitt Romney stands to benefit the most from this, as he would like to see his competition continue to block each other. It's unlikely, for example, that Gingrich's main competitor for the Anti-Romney vote--Rick Santorum--will lose as a result of this debate. Even Rick Perry, who has fared poorly in the debates, did well. Tonight was probably Perry's strongest performance thus far. Since Perry will not win South Carolina, that only serves to take votes from Romney's competition.

In the opening round, the debate moderators went immediately to the issue of the attacks against Bain. Gingrich did not backpedal, but he came close. Instead of pressing Romney on Bain, Gingrich said that he had merely been "asking questions." Romney took the opportunity to put the Bain issue to rest (at least in this debate). That wiped out the main line of attack that had been made against Romney.

In general, the candidates did not really attack Romney. At one point, Santorum threw his weight around by challenging Romney--but it was on the issue of allowing felons to vote. Romney, who was taken by surprise at the question, was against allowing felons to vote, while Santorum was in favor. Santorum wanted to know why Romney didn't change the law in Massachusetts to prevent felons from voting. Santorum looked confident, but it was on a completely tangential matter.

Though many candidates got applause, the problem faced by Romney's competitors is that they needed to either destroy Romney or destroy Romney's competition and become the chief Anti-Romney. In this debate, they failed to do either.

Has Mitt Romney Been Vetted?

Romney

A few weeks ago, we explored the question of why so many candidates went boom and bust during the primary season. The answer was that voters assumed new candidates had some degree of conservatism and electability, but once they were vetted, voters learned otherwise. Mitt Romney, whom some have dubbed "the last not-Romney," is on the rise. What happens when Romney is vetted?

Although many opponents of Romney demanded to know why Romney wasn't being vetted like the other candidates were, the reality is that Romney was the only candidate who already had been vetted. The key test in determining whether a candidate has been vetted is if the average voter is already aware of the candidate's weaknesses. Even before the primary season began, voters were quite familiar with Romney's vulnerabilities.

A good contrast would be the difference in the way voters perceived Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney in early December, when Newtmania was at its peak. The conservative credentials of both Gingrich and Romney are suspect because each has flip-flopped on various issues. Gingrich was even an early supporter of the individual mandate for healthcare. But at the time, the average voter only knew about Romney's flip-flops, not Gingrich's. Until the barrage of attacks was unleashed against Gingrich, voters assumed he was a pure, Tea Party conservative. When voters learned the truth, Gingrich's numbers took a nosedive. Gingrich (or other candidates) couldn't do the same thing to Romney that he had done to Gingrich, because voters already knew the truth about Romney. In other words, Romney had already been vetted.

That doesn't mean attacks against Romney are completely ineffective. He can still lose support in response to a good negative ad, and he can still be forced into an awkward situation in a challenging debate. But it does mean that Romney's numbers are more likely to be stable--just as Romney's opponents, having now been vetted, are not likely to crash a second time.

It is interesting to note that Romney's opponents, particularly Gingrich and Perry, have now begun focusing their attacks on Romney's tenure at Bain Capital. Perhaps the most fascinating part is what they're not doing: They're not focusing the attacks on Romney's flip-flops or Romneycare. Why not attack Romney's Achilles' heel(s)? Romney's opponents may have come to the realization that they're not going to take Romney down by repeatedly saying what voters already know. If so, it's a tacit admission that Romney was already vetted and survived.

As for the Bain Capital line of attack, it's something of a desperate move. Until recently, Romney's opponents gave Bain little attention. During the September debates when Rick Perry squared off against Romney, Perry attacked Romney on many things, but not on Bain. Indeed, during one debate Perry even conceded that Romney created many jobs at Bain, but simply argued that his own job-creation record as governor of Texas was more impressive and relevant. In addition, Romney was attacked in a lot of different ways during the 2008 presidential primary, but his opponents pretty much left Bain alone.

If Romney's opponents in the 2008 and 2012 primaries didn't see fit to bring up Bain, it's probably because they judged it would be a weak attack. Those who criticize Bain (especially Gingrich) have already received backlash from conservatives--including some, like Rush Limbaugh, who do not favor Romney. Many conservatives feel that the attacks against Bain resemble attacks against capitalism from the left. The direction of an attack can be important. Recall that during the September debates, Perry lost a lot of his Tea Party support when he said that it was heartless to oppose in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. If a candidate sounds like he's coming from the left, the right turns off. That's a poor strategy for those opposing Romney, since the Anti-Romney voters are the ones who think Romney isn't far right enough.

Who Won the Republican Debate on January 7th?

When answering the question of "who won tonight's debate?" this season, most of the time the answer has been mixed. This time, that's not the case. Mitt Romney overwhelmingly won the debate. It was perhaps the most one-sided debate so far, such that nearly every observer would agree that Romney was the winner.

It was expected that most of the candidates would spend their time attacking Romney. Although there were moments when most of the candidates were critical of Romney, they didn't devote much time to it. During the first half-hour in particular, the Anti-Romneys found themselves attacking each other instead. When Romney was criticized, he did not take the bait, but instead calmly made the case for why he should be president. It's clear that he was attempting to look presidential, and he succeeded in doing so more than the other candidates did.

No new attacks against Romney were laid out. There was some criticism of Romney's tenure at Bain Capital, which Romney dealt with even more effectively than in previous debates where the issue was raised. Romney listed specific companies that Bain helped start, and listed statistics of tens of thousands of jobs created by those companies. Romney also scored big against the debate moderator, George Stephanopoulos, who pressed Romney on whether states have the right to ban contraception. Romney found himself laughing at the absurdity of the question, since no state wants to ban contraception. It would be an understatement to say the audience was in Romney's corner. Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself.

The most contentious moments of the debate took place when Ron Paul got into extended fights with Rick Santorum (accusing Santorum of too much spending and taking money from lobbyists) and Newt Gingrich (accusing Gingrich of being a "chickenhawk" for not serving in the military). It was very evident that Gingrich and Paul do not like each other.

There were some odd moments. Rick Perry, falling back into the pattern of making at least one gaffe per night, said that if America did not return to Iraq, Iran would go back into Iraq "literally at the speed of light." Paul claimed that after communists in China murdered 100 million of their own people, America broke the ice with them by playing ping-pong. And in the middle of one response, Jon Huntsman randomly spoke in Chinese for no apparent reason.

Tonight was Rick Santorum's first opportunity to play a starring role in a debate. He gave a vanilla performance: Not bad, but not especially good. It was to his detriment that he was put on the defensive by Paul, as opposed to putting Romney on the defensive. If the other candidates were supposed to provide New Hampshire a reason not to hand the state to Romney, they did not provide it. Instead, they gave New Hampshire an excuse to deliver Romney a landslide.

Primary Debate Tomorrow on ABC

The first primary debate since mid-December will take place tomorrow on ABC at 9:00pm Eastern. The Republican field has been winnowed down to six candidates: Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, Romney, and Santorum. The debate will take place just a few days before the New Hampshire primary, where Mitt Romney has been leading in the polls by a significant margin all year. Romney's competitors will be tempted to make him a punching bag. Rick Santorum probably sees himself as the chief Anti-Romney, Newt Gingrich is reportedly steaming after his loss in Iowa, and for Jon Huntsman, it will be the last chance to be relevant. Rick Perry has historically enjoyed going on the attack against Romney, but if his strategy is based soley on South Carolina, he may realize he needs to attack Santorum instead.

Romney has a familiar frontrunner's challenge: How do you deal with a debate where everyone is attacking you, again and again? Though Romney has never experienced the spike-and-crash that others have--leading some to wrongly suggest that he hasn't been vetted yet--Romney should be used to being attacked. The key is to answer the opponent's substantive arguments, but not to show annoyance. Romney has gone both routes in past debates. Sometimes he is disciplined and is able to parry the attacks with good humor; other times he lets his opponents get under his skin. The latter leads to mistakes, like Romney's $10,000 challenge to Perry in a December debate. The debate will therefore be an important test for Romney, because most everyone will be trying to make him stumble.

Is the pile-on-Romney strategy appropriate in this case? For Santorum it probably is, as Gingrich may be falling under his own weight (one South Carolina poll shows Santorum slightly ahead of Gingrich). For Gingrich and Perry, the answer is no. Their target should be Santorum, who threatens to unite the Anti-Romney voters under his own banner. To stand a chance, they must launch an assault on Santorum that brings them down to their own post-crash polling level.

What should viewers look for in the debate? Romney has been criticized over Romneycare and his tenure at Bain Capital in multiple debates, but his opponents may come up with new material. The other thing to watch for is how Santorum's new position affects the dynamic. In previous debates, he was irrelevant and often whined about it. Now he has the chance to show what he can do with a starring role. And attacks against Santorum will be entirely new territory.

Romney Wins Iowa Caucus, in Virtual Tie with Santorum

Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus on Tuesday, beating out Rick Santorum by a ludicrously narrow margin of 8 votes. Aside from Jon Huntsman, Santorum was the only candidate who never finished first in an Iowa poll. His late rise came at the last possible moment to give him a win--almost. At the final tally, Romney won 30,015 votes to Santorum's 30,007. The following are the vote percentages for each candidate:

Iowa Caucus Results
Romney -- 24.6%
Santorum -- 24.5%
Paul -- 21%
Gingrich -- 13%
Perry -- 10%
Bachmann -- 5%
Huntsman -- 1%

As Elephant Watcher predicted on Monday, Santorum's late momentum gave him the edge needed to outperform his polling and (almost) take first. For the past few weeks, Santorum had the distinction of being one of only three candidates in the race whom Elephant Watcher gave a greater than zero percent chance of winning the nomination. On Tuesday, he demonstrated why. From the start of the race, Santorum was nowhere in the polls--even in Iowa--and was written off by nearly everyone. However, the destruction of one Tea Party candidate after another left Santorum the most natural candidate for the role.

As explained in Monday's preview of Iowa, both Santorum and Romney will claim victory. Romney's campaign will say that he achieved a win in a fundamentally "anti-Romney" state and predict a win for Romney in New Hampshire. Santorum's near-tie will enable him to finally raise his profile elsewhere. Though he's hardly set foot outside of Iowa, he will be able to make the case that all of the anti-Romney voters should rally behind him. Elephant Watcher expects Santorum's numbers to rise nationally and in all of the early states.

The other winner of the night was the state of Iowa, which avoided disaster by not giving Ron Paul (or Michele Bachmann) a win. Back in June, we observed that the history of the Iowa Caucus shows the state is unfairly maligned as a breeding ground for "wildcard" candidates, and that the state's voters actually place a premium on traditional, electable candidates. Tonight's result, particularly with Romney getting first place, is another demonstration of that. Now perhaps the pundits will spare a few kind words about the sober-minded, moderate Iowa voters. However, the anti-Iowa sentiment will return in election cycles to come.

The big loser of the night is Newt Gingrich, who failed to outperform his declining poll numbers. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann should also be disappointed, as they failed to catch up to Gingrich. New Hampshire's primary will take place next week, and Romney's remaining rivals can spend that time attacking Romney if they like, but afterward they will all need to battle Santorum in South Carolina for the title of chief Anti-Romney.

How did we get here, with Santorum coming from behind to (almost) squeak out a win? It was the first step of Santorum's "winning scenario," charted by Elephant Watcher, along with the rest of the candidates' winning scenarios, back in April:

Scenario: "The 7-10 Split"
Santorum raises his profile among social conservatives in Iowa by focusing on a controversial issue where few dare to tread. Few see Santorum as a threat. As time passes, it becomes increasingly clear that Iowa is hopelessly split among several different candidates. Despite a low vote total in absolute terms, Santorum pulls off an upset in Iowa. Somewhat befuddled, social conservatives and the Tea Party wing see little choice but to rally behind him after a "RINO" wins New Hampshire.

Now comes the real test for Santorum--whether the Tea Party is, in fact, willing to overlook the non-conservative aspects of Santorum's political past. If his conservative credentials are too tarnished by attacks against him, then Romney's electability (along with campaign infrastructure, establishment support, etc.) will easily trump him. In the meantime, Santorum will need to explain to conservative voters who have never heard of him why they should abandon the other Anti-Romneys and support him.

Tomorrow: The Iowa Caucus

On Tuesday, the voting finally begins. The political landscape in Iowa has been very fluid this season. If one includes non-runner Mike Huckabee, seven different candidates have led in the polls at various times: Huckabee, Romney, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and Paul. And Santorum has come close. It's the complete opposite of New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney has led in every single poll conducted. With one day to go, Iowa is still fluid: Three candidates are in a near-tie in the final polling:

Iowa Caucus
01/01 PPP (D) -- Paul 20, Romney 19, Santorum 18, Gingrich 14
01/01 Insider Adv -- Romney 23, Paul 22, Santorum 18, Gingrich 16
12/30 Des Moines Reg -- Romney 24, Paul 22, Santorum 15, Gingrich 12
12/29 WeAskAmerica -- Romney 24, Santorum 17, Paul 14, Gingrich 13
12/28 NBC/Marist -- Romney 23, Paul 21, Santorum 15, Perry 14
12/28 ARG -- Romney 22, Gingrich 17, Paul 17, Santorum 11
12/28 Rasmussen -- Romney 23, Paul 22, Santorum 16, Gingrich 13
12/28 Insider Adv -- Romney 17, Paul 17, Gingrich 17, Santorum 13
12/27 CNN/Time -- Romney 25, Paul 22, Santorum 16, Gingrich 14
12/27 PPP (D) -- Paul 24, Romney 20, Gingrich 13, Bachmann 11

It's impossible to say for certain who the winner will be. Romney has a very slight lead in most of the polls, has organization, and has the best electability argument. Ron Paul is close behind, and his supporters are intense. Rick Santorum is in third, but has the late momentum and is the most likely to benefit from the coalescing of low-polling Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. Despite trailing by a few points, Santorum may actually have the edge.

Taking first in Iowa would be a boost for any of the three leading candidates. The size of the boost usually depends on whether the candidate exceeded expectations, and the size of the margin of victory. In this case, no one knows which candidate will win. The only expectation is that it will be close.

In one sense, Santorum is likely to benefit even if he doesn't take first place: He's ahead of other Anti-Romneys like Gingrich, Perry, and Bachmann. He'll have an argument to stay in the race. Ron Paul is going to stay in the race no matter what, and a victory for him would only serve to de-legitimize the Iowa Caucus.

Romney's team will have the most flexible spin on the results. Romney carefully avoided expending too many resources in Iowa, because he wanted to keep expectations low. But he also spent enough to make it possible to win. Obviously a win in Iowa would be an enormous boost to the idea that Romney is the frontrunner. A second-place finish, especially if it's close, would also be taken as a win. If Santorum wins, Romney's campaign would argue something to the effect of, "Iowa is an Evangelical state, and the Evangelical candidate only barely beat Romney." If Paul wins, Romney's campaign would argue that Romney was the highest-ranking sane candidate, and that Iowans should be disregarded. A third place finish behind both Santorum and Paul would be disappointing, but if Paul is close to winning, that fact would be used to attack Iowa's credibility.

Among the lower-tier, it will also be competitive: Bachmann wants to beat Perry to claim her status as the chief Tea Partier. Perry wants to avoid that, and would like to beat Gingrich to claim his status as the chief Southerner to compete in South Carolina.

2012 Republican Primary in Review: December 2011

Each month, Elephant Watcher recaps the activity that occurred in the Republican primary during the previous month. Follow these links to read earlier recaps: May, June, July, August, September, October, November.

December was the month of the rise and fall of Newt Gingrich. Herman Cain was already on the decline, paving the way for Gingrich to become the next Anti-Romney flavor of the month. Most of Cain's support was shifting over to Gingrich. On December 3, Herman Cain dropped out, falling under the weight of yet another sex scandal.

Gingrich's rise took place as quickly as Cain's and Rick Perry's had. Gingrich had become the greatest threat to Romney's candidacy since Perry. But unlike Cain and Perry, Gingrich was able to use his intellect and rhetorical skill to push his numbers higher than those of his predecessors. Rather than collapsing in the debates, Gingrich impressed the audience. In both of the month's debates, on December 10 and December 15, Gingrich was widely proclaimed the winner. While Romney performed ably in the December 15th debate, he made a gaffe in the prior debate when he offered Perry a $10,000 bet.

Gingrich reached his peak around December 13, when he nearly tied Mitt Romney on Intrade. Intrade investors, like the Republican establishment, were skeptical of Gingrich, but his poll numbers washed the skepticism away: Gingrich took a double-digit lead over all his opponents in the national polls, a double-digit lead in Iowa, a lead of about 20 points in South Carolina, and dominated Florida polls by polling at nearly 50%. Even Romney's New Hampshire stronghold buckled, reducing Romney's lead to 10-15 points in some polls.

Notwithstanding Gingrich's performance at the December 15th debate, the tide began to turn against him in mid-December. Romney's campaign, which had shied away from the attacks and negative ads that characterized it in the 2008 primary, understood that it was time to unload. In early December, Romney released a torrent of attack ads against Gingrich, mostly in Iowa. Ron Paul, too, began to spend from his online money chest to attack Gingrich. Even Perry, at long last, realized that he needed to focus on winning the Anti-Romney vote, and shifted his attacks in Gingrich's direction.

It was too much for Gingrich to bear. He had little money to spend on ads of his own to counter the attacks. But what really eroded Gingrich's support was the fact that the ads were based in truth: Gingrich was not the pure, Tea Party-friendly conservative that he pretended to be. Since Gingrich didn't have an advantage in conservatism, there was no counterweight to his baggage and electability concerns. Gingrich steadily fell in the polls, particularly the national and Iowa polls.

By the end of the month, the media increasingly focused on Iowa. With Gingrich (mostly) out of the way there, Romney took a slight lead over Paul, who somehow managed to translate dollars to poll numbers. Rick Santorum, who faithfully waited his turn as the final Anti-Romney, got a last-minute increase in Iowa polls. With the Iowa Caucus just a few days away, polls essentially suggested a three-way tie among Romney, Paul, and Santorum, with the late momentum on Santorum's side. Perry and Michele Bachmann, who placed most (or all) of their hopes on Iowa, were too far behind to hope for a win. Gingrich was left somewhere in between, hoping that a loss in Iowa wouldn't jeopardize his leads in South Carolina and Florida.

Iowa Remains Divided

The Iowa Caucus is imminent: Voting takes place in less than two weeks. Iowans have had plenty of time to rally around a single candidate. They could have united behind the overall Republican frontrunner, Mitt Romney. If they found Romney unacceptable, they could have united behind a single Anti-Romney, selecting the one they felt was the strongest of the remaining candidates. In 2008, Iowans did precisely that, and they gave Mike Huckabee a big win over Romney. This time, Iowa is divided.

A group of influential Evangelical leaders met in Iowa in an attempt to decide which candidate they would unite behind; they ultimately did not endorse a single candidate. The picture was different four years ago when Huckabee was the obvious choice. Back then, Romney had been leading the polls in Iowa for months--then Huckabee went from a low-polling candidate (like Rick Santorum has been this year) to a mid-level candidate in October. Once Huckabee was a realistic choice, his numbers exploded in the "Huckaboom," launching him past Romney by the end of November. It became a two-man race in Iowa, and Huckabee's lead expanded to double-digits in some polls by mid-December.

In mid-December 2007, Romney unleashed a torrent of attack ads against Huckabee--much as he did against Newt Gingrich in mid-December 2011. Huckabee's numbers dipped, and Romney retook a slight lead in some polls by the end of December. But unlike Gingrich, Huckabee never fell too far, staying around 30%. He recovered, the polls favored him again, and he won Iowa 34% to Romney's 25%.

This time around, Gingrich looked to become the Anti-Romney, but his poll numbers fell from an average of 30 to an average of 15, placing him behind both Romney and Ron Paul. Conservative, mostly Evangelical Anti-Romney forces in Iowa have gravitated to a number of other candidates: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum are all polling around 10 points each. If the voters supporting those three plus Gingrich concentrated around one candidate, as they did with Huckabee in 2008, Romney would be finished in Iowa.

Why the disunity? As with the Republican field in general, each of the Anti-Romney candidates is flawed. And each one appeals to a different segment of the Evangelical Anti-Romney bloc. For those who care little about electability, Bachmann is a pure policy conservative. For those who demand an established, well-funded, experienced candidate, Perry is the obvious choice. For those spooked by electability concerns and bad debate performances from the previous two, Santorum makes sense. For those who think Santorum just can't win because he's a low-polling nobody, Gingrich is the one with the best chance of out-polling Romney. But Gingrich is ill-suited to play the role of an Evangelical conservative, aside from the fact that his name is not Mitt Romney.

What if Huckabee had run for president again this year? Probably all four of those groups would have lined up behind him, and winning Iowa would have been a breeze. But Huckabee didn't run, so Iowa is divided. Ordinarily, low-polling candidates will lose all support at the very end, as voters strategically coalesce. This year, however, the four Anti-Romneys are each polling just high enough to survive.

Why Do Candidates Keep Crashing?

The 2012 Republican presidential primary season has been a rollercoaster, with seemingly each month bringing a new candidate to the top of the polls--only to crash a few weeks later. First, in April, it was Donald Trump. During the summer, Michele Bachmann experienced a brief moment in the sun (though only in Iowa). Rick Perry topped the polls in August and found his way back down by the end of September. Herman Cain rose in his place, but by the end of November he was a spent force. In the meantime, Newt Gingrich rose to heights not even reached by Perry, only to find his lead rapidly diminishing in mid-December.

Presidential primaries often feature ups and downs, and comeback stories are not infrequent. But the phenomenon is unusually pronounced this season. What's the reason? There are two basic factors at work: The field's lack of an "acceptable" nominee, and the way voters react to new candidates.

First we will consider the way Republican primary voters tend to greet candidates with whom they are not very familiar. Voters seem to make positive assumptions about their candidates. Simply by virtue of a candidate's presence on the stage, voters assume that the candidate--barring evidence to the contrary--is a "legitimate" one. A proper Republican candidate is both conservative and electable, and voters presume that anyone on the stage possesses both qualities.

In fact, it seems that voters are very optimistic in their assumptions. While virtually all Republican officeholders have taken a few positions that aren't conservative, voters have an "innocent until proven guilty" approach: The candidate has never strayed from conservatism. It's up to the media and the other candidates to prove otherwise. Similarly, a candidate is presumed electable.

The reality is far different. Trump was neither conservative nor electable, Bachmann was unelectable, Perry had holes in his conservatism and proved more incapable in debates than anyone could have imagined, Cain was so unelectable that he had to quit, and Gingrich is vulnerable on both attributes. Once each of these candidates got high enough in the polls, the media and other candidates illuminated the voters.

By contrast, Mitt Romney's numbers have been remarkably steady over the course of the primary. That's because voters already got to know him during the 2008 primary. If there's something you don't like about Romney, you probably knew about it before the 2012 primary began--you didn't hear about it for the first time this year in a negative ad.

The second factor has to do with the current crop of candidates. As Elephant Watcher observed at the beginning of the primary season, there is a void in the field: No single candidate is capable of both exciting the Tea Party wing and pleasing the establishment wing of the Republican Party. Chris Christie was capable of doing both, but he declined to run. Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty were capable of at least being acceptable to both wings of the Party, but Daniels declined to run and Pawlenty quit prematurely.

The result is that there is no "acceptable" candidate in the field. This means each time a frontrunner came under attack, the voters could learn something that made the candidate unacceptable, and the candidate's poll numbers took a nosedive. If there was a broadly acceptable candidate, he would have survived the vetting process and remained in the lead. This season, that couldn't occur.

Once a candidate wins enough state contests and clinches the nomination, Republicans are likely to put aside their doubts and rally around the candidate. But that won't happen while it's still time for the voters to shop.

Final Pre-Iowa Debate Tomorrow on Fox News

Fox News will host a Republican presidential primary debate Thursday at 9:00pm Eastern. This is the last primary debate scheduled prior to the Iowa Caucus. Although the minor candidates no longer have sufficient time to change their fates, the debate could have a big impact on the two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

As Gingrich demonstrated during the debate on December 10th, he is much more skilled at deflecting attacks than previous poll-frontrunners like Rick Perry and Herman Cain. Romney, who was the target of attacks through the summer (and even September/October, when he wasn't leading the polls), is the only other candidate who has shown equal skill in the debates.

Consequently, Gingrich is much less likely to be hurt in the debate than the season's earlier Anti-Romneys. On the other hand, even a skilled and disciplined debater can stumble, as did Romney with his memorable $10,000 bet gaffe earlier this month. If enough candidates throw enough attacks at Gingrich, it's possible that he could make a mistake. If he does, the media narrative will be that Gingrich is finally falling back to earth. This would go hand-in-hand with some more recent polling showing Gingrich's numbers declining slightly. That's what Romney will have to hope for tomorrow. But he must take care to avoid making any gaffes of his own.

The minor candidates have mostly concentrated on attacking Gingrich, as the poll numbers dictate they should. The exception is Perry, who remains almost as fixated on attacking Romney as he was back in September, when it still made sense. The debate is a good opportunity for Tea Party candidates to criticize Gingrich for not being conservative enough. Gingrich's success thus far has been based on voters assuming Gingrich has perfect conservative credentials. Perry was in a similar situation in September, before the debates made people more familiar with Perry's immigration policy and the HPV vaccine issue.

The wildcard is Gingrich's own strategy. Gingrich had promised to be "relentlessly positive," but he has shown a tendency toward going negative whenever Romney offends him. If and when Romney attacks Gingrich, it could trigger an extended exchange of insults. Or, if Gingrich fears being booed, he might return to his positive approach.

More Candidates Drop to Zero

For a minor candidate--one who is not close to leading in any state--time is the most precious resource. A minor candidate needs time in order to try something, anything, to change the dynamic of the race. The Iowa Caucus is only a few weeks away. Time has almost run out. As a result, the game is now over for most of the minor candidates.

Though many of the candidates will stick around--some, like Ron Paul, all the way until the convention--the field has been winnowed down to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. After last night's debate, the odds of each Republican's winning the nomination have been recalculated. Two more candidates, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, have fallen to zero percent. Here are the recent changes:

Huntsman -2% -- As Huntsman learned at last night's debate, the barrier to entry for the debates goes up as voting day draws closer. Huntsman's numbers were not high enough to give him access to the debate, and you can't win without appearing at debates. Huntsman was focused on taking down Romney to create an opening in New Hampshire, but he's out of time.

Perry -2% -- The debates have not been kind to Rick Perry. He was already on life support after the first several took their toll, and he has done nothing to revive himself. With many Tea Partiers flocking to Gingrich and the rest either skeptical of Perry's conservatism or electability, Perry has been squeezed out. He lost his two-front war on both fronts.

Santorum -1% -- Santorum needs to hope that eventually the conservative Evangelicals in Iowa lose faith in Gingrich. If they do, they only have one more candidate to try out: Santorum. Gingrich's fall will need to happen quickly.

Romney -2% -- Romney's inherent attributes as a candidate make him stronger than Gingrich and more likely to win a protracted war. Unlike Gingrich, Romney's "negatives" are already priced in: Voters already know what they don't like about Romney, so he's unlikely to fall. But the burden is on Romney to take Gingrich down before voters go to the polls. Each day that passes without a successful attack on Gingrich is a day Romney can't afford to waste.

Gingrich +7% -- Gingrich's situation is the opposite of Romney's. As the leader in the polls, Gingrich wants time to fly as quickly as possible. So far he has not been damaged, and he can see Iowa on the horizon.

2012 Republican Primary in Review: November 2011

Each month, Elephant Watcher recaps the activity that occurred in the Republican primary during the previous month. Follow these links to read earlier recaps: May, June, July, August, September, October.

The month of November saw the decline of Herman Cain, the rise of Newt Gingrich to the lead in the polls, and the annihilation of Rick Perry.

As the month began, the story dominating the political headlines was the Cain sexual harassment scandal. Though Republican voters were highly resistant to believing that Cain was guilty, Cain became vulnerable, and some of his supporters began switching over to the Gingrich camp. At the same time, Cain proved incapable of discussing foreign policy issues. To make matters worse, two of the three debates (on November 12th and 22nd) were focused entirely on foreign policy. Cain's numbers eroded.

Perry was already weak when November began. Cain had taken over the Tea Party segment of the Republican Party. But Perry absolutely finished himself off at the November 9th Republican debate, where he made an extraordinary gaffe by forgetting his own three-point list. Perry didn't quit the race, but he may as well have.

As the month wore on, the Tea Party segment of the Party and the Anti-Romney contingent increasingly gravitated toward Gingrich. They did not take a closer look at any of the other candidates; they all failed to gain traction. Mitt Romney retained his stronghold in New Hampshire, according to the polls. But as soon as Cain fell in Iowa and South Carolina, Gingrich picked up the slack in those states. The debates assisted Gingrich, who was as comfortable discussing foreign policy as Cain was uncomfortable. Gingrich's rise occurred even more rapidly than Cain's had during October.

At the close of the month, new allegations surfaced about Cain having a long-term affair with a woman who was willing to speak publicly about it. Cain did not drop out of the race, but admitted he was considering it. Cain's supporters--already buckling--then broke. Cain's numbers appeared ready to collapse as precipitously as Perry's had. All indications were that Cain's supporters would flock to Gingrich as the last remaining alternative to Romney.

But as November came to a close, the situation was not as bright for Gingrich or as dire for Romney as the polls made it appear. Gingrich remained completely unvetted, having not been attacked by his competitors or examined by the media. A month remained before the Iowa Caucus for Gingrich to fall under the weight of his personal and political baggage. Romney, having already been vetted (multiple times), remained secure in New Hampshire and the favorite to win the nomination. Elephant Watcher calculates that Romney's odds of winning the Republican nomination are currently 70%.