After spurning him for John McCain in 2008, I thought my native Connecticut would learn to love Mitt Romney this time around. I might’ve been wrong. On Friday, the Connecticut Republican party released the results of its presidential straw poll, in which Romney triumphed with 29 percent of the vote. He beat Newt Gingrich, however, by only one percentage point. And Ron Paul, mind you, won 26 percent. (Rick Santorum, meanwhile, won only 11 percent.)
Now the voting methods were suspect: Online voting lasted from January 5 through January 20, and there were two physical polling stations in Bristol and Norwich. The party claims Nutmeggers cast 90 percent of the vote (who cast the other 10 percent?). But the Gingrich surge is showing in ways big and small.