Five big lessons from Florida’s primary election results, where Mitt Romney won solidly with nearly half the vote and all 50 delegates at stake:
1) The gender gap returned with a vengeance: In the final days before the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, blindsided the candidate with the accusation that he had wanted an “open marriage.” The former speaker garnered roars of approval from a debate audience when he dressed down CNN moderator John King for starting off the evening with that topic. Some wondered whether that revelation, and the reminder of Gingrich’s three marriages, would hurt him in the contest, particularly among women.
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By Saturday night, South Carolina women rejected the conventional wisdom that past marital woes would repel the fairer sex: Gingrich carried the largest share of the vote among women, with 38 percent to Romney’s 29 percent. His fans crowed that those issues had proven irrelevant in a time of runaway debt and lingering economic pain.
But subsequent general-election national polling showed a gargantuan gender gap, indicating that while South Carolina Republican women may not have had much of a problem with Gingrich, women in other states and outside the GOP did. An NBC/WSJ poll suggested that Gingrich has big problems with women, losing them 21 percent to 69 percent in a head-to-head matchup with President Obama. Rasmussen’s numbers weren’t much better — “Among women, the president leads Romney by 11 and Gingrich by 22” — and CNN showed an 18-point spread between Obama and Gingrich.
And Florida women did not warm to Gingrich as Palmetto State Republican women did: Romney won 51 percent among women, while Gingrich won 29 percent. Among men, Romney’s margin was much narrower, 41 percent to 36 percent.
The Wall Street Journalreported that, “asked by reporters on Sunday why a gender gap had appeared in recent Florida polls, Mr. Gingrich said: ‘I have no idea.’”
The “Ideas Candidate” might want to think about that.
2) The elderly abandoned Newt: Throughout the primaries, voters 65 and older have been Gingrich’s strongest demographic. Newt has won a larger share of voters in this age group than any other. He won 17 percent among this group in Iowa (second only to Romney), 14 percent in New Hampshire (third behind Romney and Jon Huntsman), and 47 percent in South Carolina (ahead by a wide margin).
Some of this may be because Gingrich is, at 69, the second oldest candidate in the field (Ron Paul is 76); some of this may be because elderly voters are most likely to remember Gingrich’s accomplishments in the mid-1990s — winning a GOP House majority, seeing budget surpluses, and reforming welfare; some of this may stem from the fact that Gingrich’s much-discussed criticism of a budget drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan as “right-wing social engineering” included the words, “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate. I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.”
Mitt in reality barely pulled out a Win in Florida! reason being Mitt was campaigning in Florida months ahead of everyone else, close to or over a half a million early votes were cast when the Media and Republican party elites already declared Mitt the obvious “electable” party leader and winner (so most of the mail ins would vote for him because "who wants to vote for a loser") and the biggest disaster is Mitt out spent Newt by an ungodly amount for months and Mitt could barely squeeze a 13% lead??? (Newt did that in NH and didn’t even spend as much as Mitt there!) Mitt should have easily been in the upper 20% to mid 30% if it really was a Mitt slam dunk, but it wasn't which should really make insiders wonder, If Mitt had to spend nearly a 10 to 1 to beat a fellow republican who didn't have as much money as Mitt what’s Mitt going to do against a Obama Billion dollar war chest and at least 4 fifths of the MSN acting as Obama's exclusive press club... It really looks bad for Mitt to have won by so little with such great effort that was expended! And Mitt had all the big guns coming out to endorse him in Florida and he barely squeaks a 13% victory!!! Mitt is only winning because of “Cash” and the “Party Elites” otherwise Mitt would be less then Rick S. Yes the Election is for the Republican Elites to Lose and based on how they are doing now I’d say Obama is a shoe in!
"Barely squeeze a 13% lead?" Reagan beat Mondale by just a little bit more than that and to this day republicans call it one of the most epic land slides in US history. A 13% lead isn't easy in any circumstance. While I agree that Romney is heavily propped up by money, that doesn't change whether or not he won. Would you suggest that if Newt lost it must have been because of money and not because of his political and personal history? Furthermore, would you suggest that Newt's loss, due supposedly to insufficient cash, would make him more competetive than Romney against Obama during the general election? How would Newt's inability to raise campaign money be an advantage against Obama?
By the way, this notion of the party "elites" is getting old. I'm not even a Romney supporter (I'm actually a Ron Paul supporter) and even I think that is a worn argument. Ann Coulter has pointed out that the only ones who use that argument are the Newt supporters and they define the establishement or elites as anyone who supports Romney.
If you believe in this establishment garbage either name names and explain who this establishment is (and why Newt is not the leader of this establishment) or just admit that republicans in general are split. Newt is more establishment than the other three by far but that doesn't fit the current narrative. If anyone is really concerned about an establishment, Washington as a whole is the establishment. Ron Paul is the only candidate who defies that establishment. Santorum is a neocon but at least he's an honest human being. Romney is a standard politician but he is not the real establishment. Newt is the one guy who represents everything corrupt about the Washington establishment.
I'm sure you'd come up with a variation of this if Mitt won the general election in November.
Gingrich, as your post unwittingly announces, is divisive, a fool, and someone who would galvanize the opposition. I am a conservative. I've never voted for a Democratic candidate for president. With Gingrich as nominee, I'd be tempted.
Ha! That just shows how conservative you really are - you'd vote for a Democrat if Newt was the nominee?! Why not vote for a third-party conservative candidate? Most States have them.
For example, I won't vote for a Democrat if the guy I despise (Romney) is the nominee - instead I will vote for the Constitution Party candidate (they usually run one here in Ohio). That will at least ensure that my vote goes to a Conservative.
Why won't you do something similar? I suspect that I already know the answer - like Romney, you're not really a conservative.
One other thing we learned: leaving aside Ron Paul's voters, the conservative vote in Florida fought Mitt Romney to a tie, even with all his advantages.
One thing we did not learn for certain, given how many early votes cast down here, is how many votes Rick Santorum may have earned, not due to his daughter's medical scare, as a result of his thorough evisceration of Mitt Romney during the debate when the topic turned to Obamacare and socialized medicine genrally.
#6 Negative ads work. As a Floridian, I could not escape the tidal wave of negativity. Those ads, while condemned by most, are very effective in swaying the average voter who gets the majority of their information from advertising. Romney outspent Newt by a wide margin (or, more correctly, Restore Our Future outspent Winning Our Future). The areas that were somewhat immune to the ad blitz, the more rural areas, went for Newt.
#7 Romney does better in less-conservative areas. It would be interesting to see a map of Romney’s vote compared to either the 2008 primary when he was the more conservative candidate or the 2008 general. The panhandle is more conservative, the coasts, especially the southern coastal counties go Democrat. Romney won the blue counties, counties he will lose by a wide margin in the general.
Mitt in reality barely pulled out a Win in Florida! reason being Mitt was campaigning in Florida months ahead of everyone else, close to or over a half a million early votes were cast when the Media and Republican party elites already declared Mitt the obvious “electable” party leader and winner (so most of the mail ins would vote for him because "who wants to vote for a loser") and the biggest disaster is Mitt out spent Newt by an ungodly amount for months and Mitt could barely squeeze a 13% lead??? (Newt did that in NH and didn’t even spend as much as Mitt there!) Mitt should have easily been in the upper 20% to mid 30% if it really was a Mitt slam dunk, but it wasn't which should really make insiders wonder, If Mitt had to spend nearly a 10 to 1 to beat a fellow republican who didn't have as much money as Mitt what’s Mitt going to do against a Obama Billion dollar war chest and at least 4 fifths of the MSN acting as Obama's exclusive press club... It really looks bad for Mitt to have won by so little with such great effort that was expended! And Mitt had all the big guns coming out to endorse him in Florida and he barely squeaks a 13% victory!!! Mitt is only winning because of “Cash” and the “Party Elites” otherwise Mitt would be less then Rick S.
Yes the Election is for the Republican Elites to Lose and based on how they are doing now I’d say Obama is a shoe in!
What Florida showed us that anyone can win if they've can spend $6 million in negative campaign ads in 10 days. This field is so weak that if Hillary ran as a GOP candidate she would be competitive.
You also might have noted, Mr Geraghty, that despite his continuing pander for a "Moon base", Newt lost Brevard County, the home of Cape Canaveral.
Now going to Nevada, I'm sure Newt will want to take his "lunar colony" money and spend it on a 600 passenger, nuclear-powered Super Train from Los Angeles to Vegas.
6) If you spend 99% of your ad budget attacking Newt Gingrich with TV ads, outspending him by a couple orders of magnitude, you can win in Florida.
Of course, Obama will be able to outspend the GOP nominee by a similar amount in the general as well as getting all that free Left Wing Media time, so that karmic wheel may yet come around to bite Romney and his Establishment hack supporters in a big way.
How anyone can claim with a straight face that Gingrich isn't a member of the GOP establishment is beyond me.. His problem isn't that he's not establishment, it's that he's tainted establishment.
OK, actually, his problem is his mouth/ego/communication skills. But with regard to who is and is not "establishment", he's simply tainted establishment.
I am a white, single, evangelical woman in Jacksonville, FL. When I went to the polls yesterday, I felt like I might as well use the "eeny, meeny, miney, moe" method of voting.
I am pretty much disgusted with the useless negative campaigning of the frontrunners. Neither has laid out any specific plans on how to turn this country around. Instead we get "Romneycare is not Obamacare" and "Let's build a colony on the moon."
I'm usually an optimist, but at this point I don't see any real chance that we can defeat Obama in the fall. We will probably have another plastic RINO candidate who is not inspirational and not particularly conservative. And while Romney has deep coffers, Obama's are deeper and he has the added bonus of willing sycophants in the media who will protect him at all costs.
Macduff might as well have been speaking about the US when he said, "Alas, poor country. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds."
I voted for Gingrich (for myself it was him or Santorum).
Florida is a Closed Primary state so Romney did THAT well amongst registered Republicans, no Independents present. To me this shows (much to my chagrin) that the members of the Republican Party are making up their minds to support or at the least accept Romney as the nominee. Could things still change that? Sure, that's why there are more Primaries/Caucuses to go through. However, in a State with diverse Republican views, Romney scored big. I don't like it but it's reality.
Romney is not my choice but even he is better than President Obama.
In the photo accompanying this story, Romney looks like he's trying REALLY hard to pretend that he truly does want to smooch his wife in front of this crowd.
How spontaneous and passionate! How un-scripted! How human-like!
It would be a very bad idea not to select from the candidates running (I have to exclude Paul, though). The Dems and media would have a field day on how the GOP couldn't trust its voters, how compromise candidate X represents a defeat for democracy, blah, blah, blah...
1. The politics of personal destruction still work if you have enough money and the backing of the media.
2. National Review and a number of other formerly respectable conservative publications have decided that the politics of personal destruction is an appropriate means to justify their ends, even if it means disembowelling one of the most prominent conservative leaders of the past 30 years. A man who, incidentally, was leading the charge for the Contract with America while your boy Romney was kissing up to Democrats.
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