We’ve been talking a lot about the Ames expectation game. But what does it mean in terms of cold, hard numbers? How will we measure whether or not Mitt Romney meets expectations on Saturday?
It’s not an exact science — and the various campaigns’ spinner will do their best to make it even less exact. But Jonathan Martin has some analysis:
But what exactly does Romney have to win by to win, or at least not lose, the expectations game? [...]
One marker that Romney’s team is very conscious of, though, is what then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush achieved in 1999. He picked up 7,418 votes, besting his nearest competitor, Steve Forbes, who had 4,921 votes — a 10 percent margin of victory.
That contest drew a total of 23,685 ballots — right about what many in Romney’s camp expect on Saturday.
Martin also points out that a large margin of victory, at this point, probably won’t even give Romney much of a bounce anyway — rather it has become the baseline necessity for Romney to be able to claim he’s holding on as the favorite in Iowa.
I’m starting to agree with Newt Gingrich: this whole campaign thing just goes on way too long.
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Left by The Right’s Field » Romney on the air before Ames
August 8, 2007 at 1:59pm