Mitt by 15? Rush’s Decision Unclear

31 January 2012 |permalink | email article

FUNNY thing happened on the way to the ballot box today in Florida. As Nate Silver’s Political Calculus in the New York Times posted late Monday he noted a wide diversity of results, even among polls that were in the field at the same time. One poll, conducted Saturday and Sunday, gave Romney a 20-point advantage, while another poll, conducted on Sunday night, put Romney up 20 points. At the other end of the spectrum, a poll conducted Sunday had more favorable results for Gingrich, showing him behind by just 5 points. Another poll taken Saturday and Sunday had him with a manageable-looking 7 points deficit. The macroscopic solution, of course, is to take an average of the polls, as the FiveThirtyEight forecast does. That forecast now projects a 15-point win for Romney, with a projected vote range of 44.7% compared to 29.4% for Gingrich. He has roughly a 3 percent chance of pulling off a massive upset.

Briefly Noted: Politico reported late Monday that Rush Limbaugh, a Palm Beach resident, was undecided on election eve on whom he would support in the Florida presidential primary. “Not yet,” he wrote when asked. “All three are possible.”—Novice RNC chairman Reince Priebus got himself into lots of trouble on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in comparing Obama to the Italian cruise ship captain who allegedly abandoned his sinking ship by suggesting that the president is campaigning instead of doing his job. Former RNC chair Michael Steele got it, calling the analogy “unfortunate.” It’s likely to backfire on hotshot Priebus far more than he knows.—Poor Jan Brewer. Back n 2010, the Arizona governor defended Arizona’s tough immigration law, telling a reporter she was deeply hurt by the terrible names people were calling her. The worst, she said, were the comparisons to the Nazis, “knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime. Problem was, as TMZ reported, Brewer has a history of getting facts wrong. Her quote went viral and was inaccurate—her father had, in fact, died of lung disease in California in 1955, a decade after WWII ended.

California Politic

Last week Gov. Jerry Brown said “we’re not going to be a Third World country if I have anything to say about it,” noting that 14 other countries have bullet trains in service. Last week he told ABC 7’s Eyewitness Newsmakers program airing in Los Angeles that the project will cost far less than the state’s current estimate of that amount and that environmental fees paid by carbon producers will be a source of funding. His remarks came as his administration, as the Sacramento Bee reported, prepares revisions of the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s latest business plan. The Legislature remains skeptical.

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