15% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/14-1/16/12
5% - Newt Gingrich’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/22-1/24/12
8% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken on 1/28/12.
A week before the South Carolina primary Mitt Romney (R-Mas), lead Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) by an average of 10%, only to have Gingrich beat him by 12% - a 22% swing in the polls in a week.
On 1/16/12 Public Policy Polling released a poll showing Romney heavily favored to win The Florida Republican primary. Eight days later, on 1/24/12, after Romney lost South Carolina, Public Policy Polling released a poll with Gingrich up by five points in Florida. The race in Florida has tightened over the past two days. Romney now has an average of an 8 point lead over Gingrich.
The fact that the Republican nomination race is so volatile, and the rise of a weak candidate like Gingrich underscores how much the dynamics of elections are changing.
One change is the sheer number of debates, which allowed hothouse flowers like Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Min), Herman Cain (R) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex), to survive long past their shelf life. 19 nationally televised debates thus far, allowed these little known candidates to introduce themselves to the nation and stay in the spot light.
In the long run the number of debates hurt Bachmann and Perry, when their continued turn in the limelight only heightened their weaknesses. But, the debates were perfect for Gingrich. With little money and organization, a campaign that once looked more like a book tour transformed itself into a real force through all the free media the debates provided.
Even that wouldn’t have been possible without the Citizens United decision, which opened the door for individuals to give unlimited amounts of money to “independent Super Pacs.”
Gingrich proved all a candidate has to do to stay in the running is convince one rich person of the rightness of his or her cause. Over the past month, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson gave $10 million to the Gingrich Super Pac, Winning Our Future. Without that money it is more likely Gingrich would be in the position of Bachmann than a potential nominee.
Citizens United returned the political finance system to pre-Watergate days, with one significant difference. In 1972 a supporter could give huge amounts of money directly to the candidate and it took a lot of hard and time consuming research for someone else to trace who it came from.
Now a simple search on the internet shows Adelson not only gave $10 Million to a Presidential candidate, but he did it while his casino company is under investigation by both the SEC and the US Justice Department. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-sunlight-foundation/sheldon-adelson-newt_b_1234805.html).
The internet makes it harder to hid money and easier to raise it.
In 2004 Gov. Howard Dean (D-N.H) was the first Presidential candidate to show how the internet could quickly raise money and volunteers. In 2008 President Obama took what Dean learned about the internet to build a massive, efficient fundraising and volunteer machine. He raised so much money on the internet that he was able to opt out of the Federal campaign finance system and spend an unlimited amount of money in the general election. Obama used those volunteers to out organize Hillary Clinton in a string of caucuses, which won him enough delegates to leave Clinton playing catch-up through the entire primary season.
It might be Ron Paul’s legacy to demonstrate how a candidate can run an effective national campaign without party support or infrastructure.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) is using the free media provided by the debates and the Obama internet fundraising model, to stay in the race. Like Obama he understands the power of many small dollar donations and the volunteer pool that comes with them.
The debates keep him on the national stage, while he uses the internet to organize his volunteers to win delegates in the Republican caucus schedule. As Gingrich and Romney fight it out in expensive bloody primary battles, Paul can take his “Money Bombs” and drop them on one inexpensive caucus after another and acquire a substantial block of delegates with little competition or expense. It is possible that he will arrive at the convention with enough delegates to hold the balance of power.
In 2016 we will be examining how each candidate used Twitter in 2012. In the next cycle a candidate will build on how a candidate successfully used Twitter to gain an edge over a rival.
Now both Republicans and Democrats use Twitter to create spin and push stories. After a debate, a candidate’s spin room surrogate is more likely to push a narrative picked up from tweets sent during the debate rather than spinning a story of their own. Romney’s $10,000 bet with Rick Perry was picked up by twitter and pushed to press before the debates were even over.
Candidates are also using Twitter in their get-out the-vote efforts. In Iowa on caucus day, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pen) used tweets to remind his supporters to go and participate. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/politics/twitter-is-a-critical-tool-in-republican-campaigns.html?scp=4&sq=Twitter&st=cse)
Modern campaign fundraising began 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt set a staff member up in an office in New York City with a telephone. He told him to call every industrialist he could reach and ask for $50,000 each. This was the first time that anyone used the telephone in an organized way to raise money for a Presidential campaign. The Democrats were outraged and out fundraised - and they lost.
No one yet knows what the long term impact of the combination of Citizens United, Super Pacs, Twitter and the internet will be. But, like we did with the telephone, we are learning.
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