Record Turnouts & Tight Battles Hurt Ron Paul
I just read an article, Ron Paul, loser again. Here is my response:
I had little hope that Paul might do well when I first started supporting him, but as time moved forward my hope increased as the media reported on the lackluster of the GOP. I just figured that if no one cared about the candidates then no one would show up to the primaries. But the Paul supporters would show up, as they did, and hand Ron Paul shocking top three finishes in many states. Still a long shot, but there seemed to be a chance.
Yesterday, NH had record breaking numbers. If I had expected record breaking numbers, then it would have been obvious to me that he wouldn’t do as well. ALL the Paul supporters would have come out yesterday regardless of everyone else.
Instead we had extremely tight races on both sides of the isle. This put New Hampshire in an absolute buzz. On top of that the weather was perfect.
It was the drama between Romney and McCain that hurt Dr. Paul most. A close look at the Exit Polls shows that 28% of those who were “strongly favorable of Ron Paul” voted for either McCain (8%) or Romney (20%). Even worse, 73% of those that were “favorable” of Ron Paul voted for Romney/McCain. I believe that not only did droves of people dilute the support for Ron Paul, but everyone starts to vote against the candidate they dislike rather than for their first pick.
We have a group of Pentecostals trying to defeat Romney’s Mormonism (even Ron Paul suggested with Jay Leno that discrimination against Romney’s Mormon faith could cost him the race), some who would vote just so Huckabee won’t be in, and another group that doesn’t want Guliani. A lot of voters are voting to defeat the candidate they don’t want, and I think that is part of why we had such huge turnouts. Ron Paul’s supporters seem pretty pure in this regard, they certainly aren’t voting to just defeat others, they just want to vote on principle.
People don’t support Ron Paul overnight. I didn’t and I don’t know one person who has. His ideas take time to digest and understand. When you have bunches of people, scarcely educated on their candidate, you can assume they will vote for what seems most exciting, McCain and Romney. Many of these people didn’t choose a candidate until the last minute.
Tags: , Jay Leno, loser, losing, New Hampshire, ron paul