It's Primary Day In Florida

Today is primary day in Florida, and that state will give all of their delegates to the person who finishes in first place tonight. That would be 50 delegates. Florida normally would have 99 delegates, but their number of delegates was cut in half because they retained their winner-take-all format (while the Republican Party says any state voting before April must have proportional delegates apportioning). Right now it looks like the person who will get those 50 delegates is Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie).

Wall Street Willie has done better in the last couple of debates, and that certainly helped him. But probably the biggest factor in his Florida rebound is his massive amount of money spent. In Florida, there has been $15.9 million spent on ads for Romney ($7 million by the Romney campaign and another $8.9 million by the Romney super-PAC), while only about $4 million was spent on ads for Gingrich ($1.2 million by the Gingrich campaign and another $2.8 by his super-PAC). That's a huge advantage for old Wall Street Willie.

Yesterday I posted five recent Florida polls, and all of them had Romney with a significant lead in that state. Now the Rasmussen Poll has released it's latest figures, and they verify what the other polls have been saying. Here are those numbers:

RASMUSSEN POLL
Mitt Romney...............44%
Newt Gingrich...............28%
Rick Santorum...............12%
Ron Paul...............10%
Other/Undecided...............6%

That takes care of the voting for January, and for Gingrich's best early voting chances. His next chances to make inroads into Romney's delegate count won't come until the end of February and the first week of March. Arizona and Michigan will hold their primaries on February 28th, and 10 more states will vote on March 6th (Super Tuesday). The question now is can Gingrich hold on until the end of February.

There are four caucuses in the first half of February -- in Nevada, Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota. There is also a primary in Missouri, but it is just a beauty contest and doesn't award any delegates. It is doubtful that Gingrich will do too well in those caucuses, since he just doesn't have the organization in place. Romney is organized in those states, but so is Ron Paul. And Ron Paul has shown an extraordinary ability to turn out his supporters for caucuses. If Paul is going to do much of anything this year, the next couple of weeks are his big chance to shine.

Here is the schedule through Super Tuesday:

February 4, 2012	Nevada (caucus)
February 4–11, 2012	Maine (caucus)
February 7, 2012	Colorado (caucus) Minnesota (caucus) Missouri (primary) – No delegates awarded
February 28, 2012	Arizona (primary) Michigan (primary)
March 3, 2012	Washington (caucus)
March 6, 2012 (Super Tuesday)	Alaska (caucus) Georgia (primary) Idaho (caucus) Massachusetts (primary) North Dakota (caucus) Ohio (primary) Oklahoma (primary) Tennessee (primary) Vermont (primary) Virginia (primary)