The 2012 South Carolina Primary

With all but a handful of precincts reporting, South Carolina’s GOP primary last Saturday (January 21, 2012) looked like this:

Newt Gingrich 243153 (40.45%)
Mitt Romney 167280 (27.83%)
Rick Santorum 102057 (16.98%)
Ron Paul 77993 (12.97%)

How does this compare to the primary four years ago? (January 19, 2008)

John McCain 147733 (33.15%)
Mike Huckabee 132990 (29.84%)
Fred Thompson 69681 (15.63%)
Mitt Romney 68177 (15.3%)
Ron Paul 16155 (3.62%)
Rudy Giuliani 9575 (2.15%)

1. The pundits don’t know anything. After Romney won New Hampshire with 40% two weeks ago, the commentariat was pontificating about how Romney was cementing his inevitable path to the nomination. Now that Gingrich surged in the final days of South Carolina and won it with 40%, the commentariat is pontificating about how Romney is so not inevitable now. Which reminds me: I don’t like the commentariat, and I try really hard not to be part of it.

2. Ron Paul is still kicking. I was wondering how the Paul campaign would spin their fourth-place finish in South Carolina, since it is their worst finish yet after scoring third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire. Then I got the email: “our campaign quadrupled its amount of support from 2008 in South Carolina!” Nice. After placing a respectable 10% in Iowa four years ago, Paul had faded to less than 4% in South Carolina and was more or less forgotten after that. Now he’s still pulling double digits, and for all the talk about how Ron Paul is unelectable and will never accomplish anything, the commentariat is now actually talking about the ways Paul is affecting the nomination and how Republicans like Romney need to think about adopting some of his positions. Not bad, not bad.

3. The race is consolidating faster this time. There were six candidates who hadn’t dropped out yet at this point in 2008, and only four this time (not counting candidates like the poor Buddy Roemer, who was completely absent from all election result I could find, and I have no idea how many write-in votes he may have gotten).

I’d love to tell you what I think about the latest surge of Gingrich against Romney and what I think is going to happen next, or when Santorum will drop out and endorse somebody, or whatever, but I’m probably wrong, and if you’re going to spend some time reading the opinions of pundits who are probably wrong, you might as well read the opinions of pundits who are getting paid for it.