It seems certain that Mitt Romney will win today’s primaries in Maryland and the District of Columbia (in D. C. Rick Santorum is not even on the ballot) and just about everyone will be shocked if he doesn’t also win in Wisconsin, where recent polling shows him leading Santorum by an average of 40%-33%. There are no more primaries until April 24 when New York, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania vote. There is no reason to believe Santorum has any chance of winning the first three. Pennsylvania is another matter. It’s the state he represented for 16 years in Congress and where he attended college and law school.
But the two most recent polls taken in Pennsylvania in March don’t show him with very substantial leads. The Franklin & Marshall poll conducted March 20-25, showed him ahead of Mitt Romney by only 30%-28%. A Quinnipiac poll conducted March 27 through April 1 and released today showed him leading 41%-35%. The Franklin & Marshall poll shows Santorum carrying his home region, Allegheny [County] & SW, over Romney by only 29%-26%, the small Northwest by 32%-18% and the larger Central by 36%-26%. It shows Romney carrying Philadelphia & SE by 35%-26% and Northeast by 33%-20%. Quinnipiac does not give regional breakdowns, but what I found interesting is that tea partiers and evangelicals, while favoring Santorum, are as likely to have favorable feelings about Romney as non-tea partiers and non-evangelicals, and that one-third of college graduates and high income voters have unfavorable impressions of Santorum.
It seems to me that the leads Santorum enjoys in these two polls could easily be erased and overturned by three weeks of heavy spending by the Romney campaign and the superPAC supporting Romney. Santorum’s home state support is not as universal and unequivocal as was Romney’s in Massachusetts, where he won 72% of the vote. There is a case to be made that Santorum might take advantage of the results tonight, assuming Wisconsin goes for Romney, to drop out of the race to avoid a humiliating defeat in the state that rejected his bid for a third term in the Senate by a 59%-41% margin.
