The Conservative Vote Isn't Split
Speculation is all well and good. I enjoy listening to "experts" drone on with half-baked analysis as much as the next person.
But this is only the case when their hand is forced; when there's so little data that they have to speculate if they wish to keep talking (and all of them do). When we do have data, and it contradicts them, it becomes more than a little tiresome.
Case in point: the oft-repeated claim that McCain is the beneficiary of a split among conservative voters. The basic logic is that, if Huckabee were not in the race, his supporters would vote for Romney, instead, and that Romney would be more competitive in a two-man race.
The bizarre thing, of course, is that conservative activists, bloggers, and talk show hosts have been bemoaned Huckabee's alleged liberalism ad nauseam. And then, out of the other side of their mouth, they try to sell the idea that he's drawing highly conservative votes from Romney. Right.
You don't need any data to tell you that this idea is absurd...but we've got some anyway. Joe Carter over at The Evangelical Outpost lowers the boom (emphasis added):
Joe Carter - February 6th, 2008 In the latest USA Today/Gallup poll Huckabee supporters were asked for whom they would vote if the race came down to John McCain or Mitt Romney.
The results showed that McCain wins over Romney as the second choice of Huckabee voters by more than a 2 to 1 margin, 64% to 28%. McCain beats Romney 42% to 24% with Huckabee in the race (Huckabee gets 18% of the vote) and expands that margin to 53% to 30% with Huckabee voters forced to choose between the two candidates.
So, both common sense and what data we have on the issue suggests the opposite of the initial claim: that McCain has actually put together a reasonably formidable coalition of Republican voters, but has had potentially larger margins stolen by Huckabee's presence.
Some people have this wrong because they have airtime to fill, to be sure, but the common denominator of most of the misinformation being spread about is simple: a small, angry contingent of the Republican party that wants to inflate its own relevance. Hence the "threats" to stay home if McCain wins the nomination, and the continually louder insistences that Republicans can't win without them.
They're not just small and angry, though; as you can see from all the above, they're angry because they're small.
» February 6th, 2008
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