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Health & Fitness

Romney vs. Gingrich - A Look At Electability

As an inaugural post here at Patch, I thought I would post on a topic that always causes debates among Republicans - electability. One way to find out is to look at the latest polls.

As an inaugural post here at Patch, I thought I would post on a topic that always causes debates among Republicans - electability.  I think most people would agree that this race has basically come down to the heavily favored Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, while Rick Santorum is fading back to third.  Depending on who is talking, there is always the debate on who is more electable - Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

Based on the most recent available polling in state after state, I came up with a rudimentary comparison on how the two Republican front runners would fare in an electoral college battle against Obama.  The guidelines are simple, to basically use the most recent poll in each state and allocate the electoral votes to the leading candidate.  If the most recent poll shows a tie, then the electoral votes are allocated to the party that won in 2008.  If there is no polling for a state, then the electoral votes are given to the party who won in 2008.  This is somewhat moot at this point since the only states that have gone unpolled are already strongly leaning to the party that won the state in 2008 (except for Indiana, which has not yet been polled but most people would agree that this should move back into the Republican field this time around).

At my other site, The Hedgehog Report, you can look at the state-by-state tally summary for Romney versus Obama here and for Gingrich versus Obama here to check my work, but as a summary for the polls as of today, here is the stark difference between Romney and Gingrich in the Electoral College battle against Obama.

HHR POLLWATCH ELECTORAL COLLEGE - Romney v Obama
Barack Obama (D-inc) 279
Mitt Romney (R) 259

HHR POLLWATCH ELECTORAL COLLEGE - Gingrich v Obama
Barack Obama (D-inc) 426
Newt Gingrich (R) 112

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As you can see, just based on polling data alone, there is a clear electability difference between Romney and Gingrich.  As I mentioned above, one state that should flip as well and should give Romney an additional 11 electoral votes is Indiana, which currently has not seen any polls done this election cycle.  Those 11 votes would bring Mitt Romney to 270 votes, the magic number needed to win.  It is that close.  Right now, the most recent polls show Romney would pick up the following states won by Obama in 2008: Florida, Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire and Virginia.  Gingrich would only pick up Ohio while losing the following states won by John McCain in 2008: Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas

Due to Santorum being somewhat late to the frontrunner pack, there is actually very little polling done for an Obama/Santorum match up.  In fact, one of the more prolific pollsters in 2011 for state polling, Public Policy Polling, was not even including Santorum in their Republican primary polls for a period of time over the summer.  Trying to tally the state polling for a Santorum would be fruitless at this juncture.  That being said, if Santorum manages to become the Romney alternative, that could change very quickly.

Find out what's happening in Columbiawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Quinnipiac University is indicating they plan on releasing new state polls for Ohio and New Jersey tomorrow morning, so these tallies could change again tomorrow....

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