Romney: 30.03%
McCain: 29.66%
Giuliani: 14.65%
Huckabee : 13.09%
Paul: 4.15%
Undecided: 8.42%
With a total sample size of almost 15,000, the margins of error are small, about 0.8%, but not small enough to have any real confidence about the actual order. Clearly, McCain and Romney are battling for first, and Giuliani and Huckabee for third. Now, Giuliani is hoping that early voters will help push him into contention, but I am really skeptical that he'll be able to make up the 10-15% he'd need just on the backs of early voters. Mark Blumenthal has a good post about this over at Pollster.com.
The other question to ask is if there has been any late movement. In South Carolina, I saw late movement and as a result, overestimated Edwards' share. In New Hampshire, I missed the late movement and so overestimated Obama's share. So, who's share do I get to overestimate now?
Here are mega-poll results from all polls taken on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th:
McCain: 28.21%
Romney: 27.62%
Giuliani: 15.65%
Huckabee: 13.55%
Paul: 4.63%
Undecided: 10.35%
Now the mega-poll for polls taken on the 26th, 27, and 28th:
Romney: 31.25%
McCain: 30.33%
Giuliani: 14.06%
Huckabee: 12.84%
Paul: 3.64%
Undecided: 7.87%
Romney's growth of about 3.5% is statistically significant, and McCain's boost of 2% is marginally significant. The difference between them, however, is not significant. Both men are gaining, mostly at the expense of the undecideds (which is what we would expect), though it appears that Romney is gaining a bit more. But wait, let's now look just at the last two days of polling, after Florida's governor Crist endorsed McCain:
Romney: 32.17%
McCain: 31.69%
Giuliani: 13.59%
Huckabee: 12.51%
Paul: 3.8%
Undecided: 6.24%
Romney's still "up", but not by nearly a statistically significant margin.
All that basically just tells us what we already knew - it's close. I'm going to go ahead and guess that Romney comes out barely on top. I think a fair number of Huckabee voters might get into the voting booth, decide their guy's not in this one, and pull the lever for their second choice: Mitt Romney. Also, to whatever extent Giuliani out performs these polling numbers due to early voters, that takes away from McCain. So here goes...my prediction:
Romney: 35%
McCain: 33%
Giuliani: 16%
Huckabee: 12%
Paul: 4%
Polls close in 80 minutes, so not long to find out how I did this time.
1 comment:
The results tonight lead me to one large conclusion that is certainly not shocking or extraordinarily original.
Among Republicans, McCain is the CLEAR favorite at this point.
Based on surveys, he did better than Romney among voters most concerned with not only the war, but also the economy. Whereas Romney did better among voters who put the most importance on immigration. So in Florida McCain did better on the two largest nationwide issues.
Giuliani is toast, and is expected to endorse McCain, so whoever his loyal supporters are, will likely lean towards McCain. If he didn't drop out very, very soon I would be shocked. He's well aware he can't win, so why spend more money and continue to hurt his own and Giuliani Partners' reputation.
Huckabee said he is not dropping out before Super Tuesday, so, I believe he still takes some votes away from Romney. Or rather I should say, the way to keep things even would be if Huckabee dropped out and his supporters went towards Romney.
Romney to me is also sounding more and more desperate, attacking McCain more harshly and more often. Saying things like: Washington needs change, not keeping the same people but changing their seats. (I forget the exact quote).
So, to me, all signs point to John McCain as the big time GOP front-runner going into Feb, 5th.
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