Will the headline that once seemed unthinkable materialize tomorrow night? It could be because five new polls suggest that former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney and former Senator Rick Santorum are now virtually neck and neck in Michigan on the eve of the Michigan Republican primary:
Five new polls in Michigan, all conducted on Saturday or Sunday, point to a close finish between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the state’s Republican primary on Tuesday. Although Romney has gained over the last two weeks, the results of the final round of polling are inconsistent, both as to which candidate is leading and whether either candidate will benefit from a late uptick.
Three of the five surveys, by Rasmussen Reports, Public Policy Polling (PPP) and We Ask America, show Romney ahead of Santorum by two to four percentage points. The two others, an automated poll by Mitchell Research and the one live-interviewer survey by the American Research Group (ARG), show Santorum ahead of Romney by one to two percentage points. All five show Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich running far behind. All but the ARG poll were conducted using an automated, recorded voice over the telephone.
The individual polls are also inconsistent about whether a late upward trend is breaking for either Romney or Santorum. Three of the polls (by Rasmussen, PPP and We Ask America), show Romney picking up a point or two over the last few days, while the other two (by Mitchell and ARG) have Santorum gaining slightly.
Of course, both the small single-digit leads and the similarly minor shifts fall well within the margins of sampling error for each of these polls. In other words, the final trends and final levels of support are indistinguishable from mere statistical noise.
Can we get to a more precise estimate by combining the polls? That is the goal of the HuffPost Pollster chart, which uses all of the recent public surveys to derive a single set of trend lines (shown below). The chart indicates a late trend toward Romney, whose support has increased roughly eight percentage points over the past two weeks. The chart’s current estimate gives Romney a roughly two-point lead over Santorum (37.4 to 35.3 percent), followed by Paul (11.6 percent) and Gingrich (9.1 percent).
Another factor: several analysts report that Romeny is expected to take a big lead on the absentee ballots cast in the primary.
Bottom line one: going into election day, the race remains up for grabs. Bottom line two: if Romney loses it’ll be a huge defeat and a major blow to his candidacy, no matter how his team spins it.
And you have to add in this factor as well:
Michigan Democratic strategist Joe DiSano has taken it upon himself to become a leading mischief maker.
DiSano says he targeted nearly 50,000 Democratic voters in Michigan through email and a robo call to their homes, asking them to go to the polls Tuesday to vote for Rick Santorum in attempt to hurt Romney.
“Democrats can get in there and cause havoc for Romney all the way to the Republican convention,” DiSano told CNN.
“If we can help set that fire in Michigan, we have a responsibility to do so,” he said.
Santorum is statistically tied with Romney in Michigan polls, and has the greatest potential of all the Republican candidates to beat Romney.
In his robo call, DiSano says “Democrats can embarrass Mitt Romney and expose him as the weak frontrunner that he is, by supporting Rick Santorum on Tuesday.”
He asks the person to “press one…if you are committed to voting for Rick Santorum on Tuesday.”
DiSano says over the last 7 days or so that he has been working on this, he has gotten some 12,000 commitments from Democratic voters to go to the polls and vote for Santorum.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.