Newt Gingrich has a chance to get back into the GOP presidential primary race with victories in the March 6 Super Tuesday primaries, but it will be Mitt Romney who will wind up the Republican nominee, according to elections prognosticator Larry Sabato and his University of Virginia “Crystal Ball” crew.
“When it’s all said and done, we believe that Romney will be giving the acceptance address in Tampa come late August. But it matters enormously whether he wins pretty or limps home ugly,” said Sabato’s team.
Helping drive Romney’s win, they tell the Examiner, could be the media and their ongoing description of the front-runner as the likely winner. After his Florida win, most outlets are now back to reporting the expectations that Romney will win this month’s remaining contests, setting him up for a Shermanesque march through the remaining political battlefields.
“How the press assesses whether Romney is the prohibitive front-runner–or even the presumptive nominee–is a significant factor in determing whether he actually is the prohibitive front-runner or presumptive nominee,” said Sabato’s team.
Still, they hold out the possibility that Gingrich could mount another comeback in some of the Super Tuesday states and the subsequent southern elections on March 13. But they provided a chart of the conservative voter makeup in the contests from today through Super Tuesday and it looks bad for Gingrich, supported by the the most conservative voters.
“It is on Super Tuesday, March 6, when Gingrich might be able to get back into a decent position to win somewhere,” they said. “With heavily conservative, evangelical electorates, Southern states Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee might be receptive to the Gingrich candidacy. After all, Newt is running as the closest thing to a traditional Southern Republican.
Alabama and Mississippi vote the following week, on March 13. Virginia, too, could have been fertile ground for Gingrich, but thanks to his failure to make the ballot, we’ll never know. (Primary voters in the Old Dominion can only vote for Romney or Paul on Super Tuesday. There are no write-ins.).”
