FiveThirtyEight: Mormon Voters Raise Romney's Advantage in Arizona

Arizona might have less symbolic importance than Michigan, but it is probably of more practical significance. That is because it’s one of the few Republican states to award its delegates on a truly winner-take-all basis, without any qualifications or complication. Get one more vote than your rivals in Arizona, and you take all 29 of its delegates.

The most tangible advantage in Arizona belongs to Mitt Romney, and it is because the state has a reasonably high Mormon population. In the 2008 primary there, Mormon voters constituted 11 percent of the electorate — and Mr. Romney won 88 percent of their votes, versus 8 percent for John McCain.

If Mr. Romney posts similar numbers among Mormon voters this year in Tuesday’s primary — and there’s no reason to think that he won’t — that works out a nine-point built-in advantage in the state.

Without that Mormon edge, in fact, the state would essentially be a toss-up. Mr. Romney is now projected to win the state by 11 points over all, according to a FiveThirtyEight forecast model, which works out to an 89 percent chance of winning given the uncertainty inherent in the forecast.

The 11-point advantage that the FiveThirtyEight model gives Mr. Romney is larger than his lead in all but one recent poll of the state. But the model is designed to be aggressive about identifying a trend, and there is perhaps the slightest hint of one toward Mr. Romney in Arizona. The two polls that have been in the field most recently — from NBC/Marist and We Ask America — gave him his largest advantage there.

With that said, there has been quite a bit of variance between different polls of the state, with Mr. Romney’s lead varying by margins of 3 to 16 points. I don’t know that there is anything special about Arizona that is causing this; we are also seeing a fairly wide spread in the polls in Michigan, as well as in national surveys. As there now seem to be differences in the level of voter enthusiasm for the candidates — more for Rick Santorum, less for Mr. Romney — the assumptions that pollsters make about turnout will tend to be more important.

Mr. Santorum’s deficit in Arizona is just large enough, however, that it would qualify as something of a surprise if he won the state. It might require either that he performs strongly at Wednesday’s debate in Mesa, Ariz.,  or that he simply beats the pollsters’ expectations on primary night itself, something he has done in several states so far.

Because there is no delegate value in merely keeping things close in Arizona, however, it is also worth watching to see whether Mr. Santorum essentially abandons the state and downplays expectations there, instead concentrating his efforts on Michigan, which also votes on Tuesday.

If Mr. Santorum wins Michigan narrowly but loses Arizona by a clear margin, he will probably fall further behind Mr. Romney in the delegate count given Michigan’s complex delegate-selection rules. Such an outcome, however, would very probably allow him to put a strong spin on the outcome — and a credible enough one, since if Mr. Romney loses Michigan, his native state, it is hard to know where he might win elsewhere in the Midwest.

But if Mr. Santorum loses both Arizona and Michigan, however narrowly, he would fall behind, according to both math and momentum.

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The Caucus: Romney's Victory in the Maine Caucuses Is at Risk

Will Mitt Romney’s victory in Maine’s nonbinding presidential straw poll be overturned?

It seems possible, now that Maine has decided to include in the total vote the results from Washington County, which delayed its caucuses by a week and will vote on Saturday.

In practical terms, the straw poll is a meaningless “beauty contest” that does not award any delegates. That is to take place later at a Republican Party convention.

But the announcement last week that Mr. Romney had won the state’s straw poll by 39 percent to Ron Paul’s 36 percent — a difference of less than 200 votes — had stopped, at least temporarily, a negative story line for Mr. Romney, who lost three state contests earlier last week to Rick Santorum.

Losing the Maine straw poll, even after the fact, would be unfortunate for Mr. Romney,  former governor of nearby Massachusetts, since he is locked in a struggle right now in Michigan, his home state, with Mr. Santorum.

Turnout on Saturday in rural Washington County is likely to be much higher than it would have been last week and could be chaotic. Because this is the only county voting — and the margin needed for victory is known — supporters of both Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul could be galvanized to flood the caucus sites. (Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich did not actively compete in the state, and trailed in the straw poll.)

The party’s decision about how to count the vote has touched off a political storm and raised questions about the whole caucus system. Caucuses in other states have been plagued with problems this year, and doubts have been raised about their fairness and the ability of state parties to manage them.

In Iowa, Republicans first announced that Mr. Romney had won but later announced that the winner was actually Mr. Santorum; the belated announcement denied Mr. Santorum the momentum often accorded to the Iowa winner.

In Maine, party rules allowed a winner to be declared last week, even though several towns had not voted yet and their votes would not be counted in the total.

But then the caucuses in Washington County were postponed because of bad weather. That meant that the votes from an entire county would not be included in the final tally.

Charlie Webster, the state’s Republican chairman, initially said that Washington County’s absence from the total vote would not matter because in 2008, only eight people in the county had voted for Mr. Paul.

But the Paul campaign and others protested vocally, saying the decision was undemocratic.

In addition, it turned out that the results of some caucuses that were held last week — most of those in Waldo County, for example — and were expected to be included in the total had not been counted either. (Waldo County’s problem was attributed to a clerical error.) This only added to the outrage, much of it directed at Mr. Webster and the state party.

On Thursday afternoon, the party’s besieged executive committee issued a carefully worded news release in Mr. Webster’s name saying it was working diligently to “reconfirm” the results from all towns. (It also said the executive committee had “approved” the announcement from Mr. Webster.)

It  said the executive committee had voted unanimously to recommend to the state committee that the votes from Washington County on Saturday be added to the total from last week. It’s not clear when those votes will be added and the final tally announced.

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Conservative Pundits Concerned With Romney’s Distance

He needed to do a better job reaching out to conservative writers and pundits, Mr. Ruddy told the candidate. But then, sensing that he wasn’t breaking through, Mr. Ruddy stopped.

“There was a lack of interest on his part as to specific recommendations I might have,” he later recalled.

“My feeling from them was that while they were happy to listen to the information, they weren’t going to act on it.”

From the television studios of Fox News to the pages of The Weekly Standard, the refrain of the conservative opinion machine is virtually the same: Mitt Romney doesn’t talk to us, doesn’t get us.

“There’s actually a cultural disconnect between a lot of conservative thought leaders and Mitt Romney,” said Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He added that Mr. Romney lacks a personal touch. “He’s not a glad-hander. He’s not like Bill Clinton or George H. W. Bush, who loved to sit on the phone and work people.”

Mr. Romney’s distant, complicated relationship with many of the conservative media’s leading voices has heightened concerns that his convictions are not as genuine and deep-seated as their own. Many commentators have pounced on some of Mr. Romney’s recent remarks — saying that he is “not concerned about the very poor” because they have a government safety net and that he was a “severely conservative” governor — as proof that he cannot speak their language.

“The real problem here is that it shows he doesn’t have fluency with conservative ideas,” Charles Krauthammer, the conservative columnist, said on Fox News.

Or, as Rush Limbaugh noted the other day on his radio show, “I have never heard anybody say, ‘I’m severely conservative.’”

Ann Coulter’s experience with Mr. Romney offers a telling case in point. She endorsed Mr. Romney in November, well before many of her peers in the conservative commentariat. Yet, she said, she had never had a conversation with him or his campaign. And when she attended a Romney fund-raiser last month at the Palm Beach, Fla., estate of Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins football team, she had to seek him out.

After Mr. Romney was done addressing the gathering, Ms. Coulter waited off stage and introduced herself — the first time since 2008 that she had seen him, she said. “I said, ‘You owe me, and you better be as right-wing a president as I’m telling everyone you’re going to be,’” she recalled. “He laughed and basically agreed.”

Mr. Romney has never displayed much ease with journalists, at least not in the way other Republicans have. The elder President Bush was known for dropping by the press area in the West Wing to talk to reporters. His son was chummy enough with the press corps traveling with him during the 2000 race that he gave many of them nicknames. And for the better part of his 2008 campaign, John McCain would regularly invite journalists back into the inner sanctum on his bus, the “Straight Talk Express.”

Mr. Romney’s outreach in 2008 was more apparent. At the 20th anniversary party for Mr. Limbaugh’s radio show, he sat with the radio host. He visited the Manhattan offices of Rupert Murdoch at least twice.

But four years later, he is elusive to many.

Andrea Tantaros, co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, said she was surprised the Romney campaign has not tried to push back against some of the more withering criticisms that commentators make every day on cable television and online.

In 2008, Ms. Tantaros could expect a phone call from an irritated Romney adviser if she made critical comments about him. But now, the silence is noticeable, she said.

And if anyone would receive an angry phone call from the Romney campaign, it would be Ms. Tantaros. She served as a communications director for William F. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor whose political strategists now work for Mr. Romney.

Offering a possible explanation for the silence, she said, “He and his staff believe we’ll eventually fall in line.”

Mr. Romney’s relations with the news media are more distant than they are hostile. And he enjoys friendly interactions with television hosts like Sean Hannity, whose radio and cable programs have been one of his regular stops, and Larry Kudlow of CNBC, who was an economic adviser in the Reagan White House.

“When I read what my friends and colleagues are writing,” Mr. Kudlow said, “What jumps out at me is (a) Mitt does not have long-term conservative movement credibility and (b) people have not entirely forgiven his early days in politics when he ran against Ted Kennedy and was governor of very liberal Massachusetts.”

Some believe the criticism is just part of the ritual flogging that Republicans put their candidates through to determine whether they are sufficiently conservative. “I think it’s a natural part of the process, and I think Mitt knew that when he decided to run again,” Mr. Kudlow said.

And others occasionally give him the benefit of the doubt, saying they think his heart is in the right place even if the words sometimes come out wrong.

“We’ll be happy to translate for him in these columns,” the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier this month. “But it would be less politically painful if Mr. Romney sat down for a weeklong tutorial with, say, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush and others who can help him.”

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Are House Republicans Mitt Romney's 'biggest liability'?

Tuesday was a terrible day for Mitt Romney. Conservatives abandoned him in droves for once-insignificant rival Rick Santorum, who won three statewide presidential contests. Still, the former Massachusetts governor remains heavily favored to win the GOP nomination. If (or when) he does, he'll surely be associated throughout the campaign with the one branch of the federal government his party controls, the deeply unpopular House. That may not be good news for Mitt. House Republicans don't seem too keen to moderate their more controversial policy prescriptions in order to help their nominee appeal to a general election audience. Is this Romney's biggest campaign challenge?

The House GOP is "Romney's biggest liability": House Republicans are going out of their way to become "an albatross to Romney's presidential bid," says Jonathan Bernstein at The Washington Post. They're "apparently preparing to dive off a cliff again" by doubling down on Rep. Paul Ryan's unpopular Medicare-voucherizing plan, and fighting a popular tax on the rich that would pay for an extension of the payroll tax holiday. "These are both issues where conservative orthodoxy is on one side, and the bulk of the American people" are on the other. Every time the House GOP brings up its "unpopular conservative positions," Romney is "going to take hits."
"Mitt Romney's biggest liability: The House GOP?"

But at least we'll get a real contest of ideas: "The future of Medicare is on the line," says Cory Adams at Big Think. And thanks to the House GOP's continued focus on Ryan's controversial plan, which Mitt has backed, "a Romney vs. Obama match-up will surely address this contentious issue." In the end, that may hurt Mitt. But we should all be glad that "in an era of record U.S. deficits, the question of individual liberty and the responsibility of the state is coming to the fore in a way that is hasn't for decades."
"Paul Ryan, individual liberty, and the fate of Medicare"

Plus, Romney's real problem is his social squishiness: "Conventional wisdom has long held that the 2012 election would be about fiscal and economic issues" like Medicare and taxes, says Joel B. Pollak at Big Government. But as Santorum's resurgence shows, "social conservatism may be due for a revival." That will be Romney's Achilles' heel: He's a notorious "flip-flopper" on social issues, and "after a year of frustrating compromises in Congress," voters want a man of conviction.
"Will 2012 be about social conservatism after all?"

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Trump's On His Side, But Mitt Romney's Antagonists Remain (The Note)

By MICHAEL FALCONE ( @michaelpfalcone ) and AMY WALTER ( @amyewalter )

By accepting the endorsement of Donald Trump yesterday, Mitt Romney removed at least one threat of a third-party run that could have complicated his chances of beating President Obama in November.

But in the short term, Romney has some obstacles in his way. Two of his three remaining rivals for the Republican nomination, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, have emerged this week as antagonists that just won't go away.

Well, make that three. The latest employment numbers out today showed the economy creating 243,000 jobs during the month January and the unemployment rate decreasing from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent. http://abcn.ws/AvW9IB

It's better-than-expected news and gives a big boost to the Obama administration's argument that the president is steering the economy in the right direction. Will it moderate Romney's rhetoric on the campaign trail?

But, back to the Republican primary. Despite Romney's big win in Florida and his big lead in the polls in Nevada where voters will caucus tomorrow, Gingrich and Santorum have shown no signs of letting up.

Santorum criticized Mitt Romney during a speech in Reno, Nev. yesterday, referring to a comment Romney made on Wednesday about not caring about America's poor, ABC's Russell Goldman reports.

"Out of touch much?" Santorum said of Romney.

Both Santorum and a super PAC supporting his candidacy have no plans to give Romney a pass during the course of February's nominating contests, and neither does Gingrich.

The Washington Times' Paul Bedard reports that the Gingrich campaign is preparing a new and sharper line of attack on Romney's governing career in Massachusetts.

"Let's have more than a peek at the Romney record in Massachusetts," Gingrich pollster Kellanne Conway told the Times. "This man runs around saying he is a successful business man who saved the Olympic Games, which are laudable, but he has never been called to account for his record in the only elected position of voter trust that he held." http://bit.ly/wzKPaS

And Gingrich kept the heat on Romney's "poor" comment on the campaign trail yesterday too, saying: "I really believe that we should care about the very poor, unlike Gov. Romney, but I believe we should care differently than Barack Obama."

ROMNEY WALKS IT BACK. In an interview with Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, Romney called his comment about the poor a "misstatement."  "I misspoke," he said. "I've said something that is similar to that, but quite acceptable, for a long time," Romney said he does "thousands of interviews," and "now and then you may get it wrong. And I misspoke, plain and simple." http://bit.ly/nJ8hJj

Does The Donald's endorsement matter? ABC's David Muir took a closer look at yesterday's big political news on "Good Morning America." WATCH: http://abcn.ws/vZoKiD

FROM THE SPEAKER'S DESK: JOBS TAKE. House Speaker John Boehner released the following statement on the January unemployment report: "There's welcome news in this latest jobs report as more Americans found work last month, but the fact is our unemployment rate is still far too high. Our economy still isn't creating jobs the way it should be and that's why we need a new approach."

THIS WEEK ON "THIS WEEK." Tune in on Sunday when ABC's George Stephanopoulos sits down with this week's top newsmakers as well as a roundtable including George Will, Matthew Dowd, Dana Loesch and Arianna Huffington. http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

THE BUZZ

THE MAN BEHIND RICK SANTORUM'S MONEY. ABC's Shushannah Walshe reports:The man fueling Rick Santorum's presidential campaign is a Wyoming cowboy with a special interest in conservative cause who wears a tall, white hat and likes to call himself the "man atop the  horse." He's also a billionaire. His name is Foster Friess, and he's largely bankrolling the pro-Santorum super PAC behind the effort to make the former Pennsylvania senator the 2012 GOP nominee. In an interview with ABC News, the mutual fund manager says he will continue "to be supportive in helping raise funds for the Super PAC" called the "Red, White, and Blue Fund," and he's encouraged by Santorum's plan to stay in the race for the long haul. "I think Rick's intention is to go all the way to the convention, about which I'm excited," Friess told ABC News in an email interview. Friess is a born-again Christian who, along with his wife, Lynn, has given millions to conservative and Christian causes, including $1 million to Koch-brothers-related causes, as well as non-political charities, including raising money for children orphaned in the Haitian earthquake. http://abcn.ws/Aa5ulT

TEAM GINGRICH TO CHALLENGE FLORIDA RESULTS. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is preparing to challenge the Republican Party of Florida after losing the Republican presidential primary there to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, ABC's Elicia Dover notes. The "winner-take-all" state had 50 delegates, all of which went to Romney, who won the state with 46 percent of the vote. The Republican National Convention voted to make early voting states proportional for the 2012 election. Florida was penalized for keeping the "winner-take-all" status. If Florida allotted proportional delegates, Gingrich would likely have picked up 16 delegates, while Romney would have walked away with 23 delegates, leaving the other 11 delegates to be split among Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. "Florida was held before a certain date," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said. "Therefore, we're asking the state of Florida Republican Party to enforce the existing rule." Hammond told reporters Thursday at a campaign stop in Las Vegas that the campaign is mailing a letter to the Republican Party of Florida, asking it to enforce the RNC proportional rule. http://abcn.ws/zISH1M

TRUMP CARD: THE DONALD BETS ON MITT. Real estate mogul Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday in a ballroom of his opulent Las Vegas hotel, saying that Romney won't "allow bad things to continue to happen to us," ABC's Emily Friedman notes. "It's my honor, real honor, and privilege, to endorse Mitt Romney," Trump said. "Mitt is tough, he's smart, he's sharp, he's not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love. So, Gov. Romney, go out and get 'em. You can do it," Trump added. Romney, in accepting Trump's endorsement, said it was a "delight." "I'm so honored to have his endorsement and, of course, I'm looking for the endorsement of the people of Nevada," Romney said. "There are some things that you just can't imagine in your life. This is one of them." http://abcn.ws/yUGygh

BACKSTORY: A political aide in Trump's office spoke directly with Mitt Romney by phone last night before Trump's private plane took off from New York City to Las Vegas. The call, sources say, was to inform Romney of Thursday's endorsement, which took place at the Trump International Hotel on the Las Vegas strip. A contracting company used by the Romney campaign has been setting up for the event since Wednesday night. Ever since Trump decided not to run as a Republican candidate last spring, members of his team indicated that if Trump was going to endorse, he wanted to pick a winner. Evidently, the real estate and reality television mogul, has settled on Romney as that candidate. Trump's endorsement of Romney comes on the heels of multiple discussions between members of Romney's team and Trump's office over the past few months. These conversations took place at the highest levels of the Romney campaign apparatus, including campaign manager Matt Rhoades. http://abcn.ws/Agq0rf

ROMNEY'S IMMIGRATION VIEWS RUN AFOUL OF MORMON CHURCH. "While Mitt Romney is taking a hard line on immigration even as the Republican primaries head toward the heavily Hispanic states of Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, the Mormon Church to which he belongs has become a decisive player in promoting policies that are decidedly more friendly toward immigrants," The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein reports. "The church was instrumental last year in passing controversial legislation in Utah that would provide "guest worker" permits to allow illegal immigrants with jobs to remain in the United States. The church also threw its weight behind the Utah Compact, a declaration calling for humane treatment of immigrants and condemning deportation policies that separate families, which has been adopted by several other states. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is known for its reluctance to be seen as meddling in politics. But on immigration, the church actively lobbied legislators, sent Presiding Bishop H. David Burton to attend the bill signing and issued a series of increasingly explicit statements in favor of allowing some illegal immigrants to stay in the country and work." http://nyti.ms/w7QAmW

WHO'S TWEETING?

@Austan_Goolsbee : jobs trends over svrl mo.: 1) big gains, 2) across many industries, 3) LFP not up but not …  m.tmi.me/lrBsy

@waltershapiroPD : What if the conventional wisdom is wrong again - and Romney remains a Potemkin Village frontrunner? My latest for TNR: bit.ly/zO2q8J

@CHueyBurnsRCP : Re: GOP react to jobs  #s, read  @CarlCannon and  @ErinMcPike Dec. story on how GOP has to be careful in crafting response realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/…

@JimMerrillNH : Reno Gazette Journal endorses  @MittRomney as the one "who best represents the long-held values of Republican Party." tinyurl.com/7ahksn3

@hollybdc : Hilarious: Lead singer of Survivor performs Gingrich's book to music of Eye of the Tiger  gaw.kr/wAxqHK

Check out The Note's Futures Calendar:  http://abcn.ws/ZI9gV

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