A few things happened over the weekend, as during the week, such as Gingrich's win in South Carolina; the State of the Union Address; and the recent poll numbers--from various data gathering agencies--neatly put together in Nate Silver's blog. It's appropriate to explain why I cite Silver frequently and that's because he tends to gather data collected from several agencies that conduct polls, compiles the polls into one set, and makes statistical predictions on outcomes be it baseball, politics, etc. Alhough, Silver does point out that there is inherent statistical errors in his model, he makes educated predictions that are sometimes accurate. Therefore, my posts are written with an objective attempt and should not be assumed as 'liberal' because I'm citing someone who works for a news agency that is slightly liberal (The New York Times).
Right after the South Carolina primary, Silver released a post wherein he ponders whether Gingrich broke "the more of the same" paradigm and falls under the "this time is different" track because Gingrich won South Carolina's primary. Silver describes "the more of the same" as the traditional approach to politics where delegates are what is important, in contrast, to "this time is different"--which is more chaotic--and is driven by the polls and a candidate's momentum. What is interesting about Silver's argument, though, is that under the latter paradigm he points out there has been a different person leading the polls at any given time in the GOP race. In fact, there's a graph that shows that some of the contenders who dropped out of the GOP nomination race have been volatile including: Gingrich, Cain, and Perry; meaning that, although, Gingrich is still in the race there are precedents to argue that Gingrich will drop out given that other volatile contender have dropped out. The graph shows that Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have remained consisted in the polls which is true when one looks at the results from Iowa and New Hampshire, where both men have overperformed or performed as expected.
Another interesting point that Silver makes is that the claim "that South Carolina chooses presidents" is weak because the claim is based on South Carolina's pick from nominees who come from states that represent a small sample with a political ambient different than the rest of the country, therefore, South Carolina has coincidently guessed who will be the nominee and, eventually, become president. Moreover, the "more of the same" statement is misleading when trying to predict who will become the nominee or the president for the aforementioned reason, so the current challenge is knowing whether the political climate is "this time is different" because the GOP may give the nomination to someone who is not 'electable,' thus, losing the presidency to Obama come November. There is evidence that this election year is the "this time is different" because recently on another post, Silver points out how Gingrich is polling after the South Carolina where Gallup national tracking poll had Romney at 29% Gingrich at 28%; Rasmussen Reports had Romney at 32% and Gingrich at 41%; and Insider Advantage had Romney at 26% and Gingrich at 34%. More evidence for this is in, yet, another post by Silver that shows that Romney stopped Gingrich's momentum in Florida.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama pointed out differences between himself and the republicans. Without going into the details, Obama pointed to stark differences that the democrats and the republicans have on the economy, particularly, that the latter side favours less taxes because less taxes somehow provides an incentive to invest in capital. Perhaps striking to republicans, is that President Obama vowed he will not waver from the Health Care reform law because all of the republicans seeking the GOP nomination have promised to repeal 'Obama Care.' Other topics included immigration, the end of the Iraq War, Osama bin Laden, and energy reform.
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