Mario Del Pero - 12/03/2012

     Super-Tuesday’s ballot confirmed the lead enjoyed by Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, but he is still not home and dry and the game looks likely to drag on. Romney has won 14 of the 25 states where voting has taken place so far; Rick Santorum, erstwhile senator for Pennsylvania, has won 7; the former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, stands on 2. In terms of deputies, Romney now seems to have gained about 470 out of the 1044 he needs for nomination; Santorum is on 210, Gingrich 115, and the fourth candidate, libertarian deputy for Texas Ron Paul, about 60. From a strictly arithmetical viewpoint, it is well-nigh impossible for Romney’s opponents to reach the threshold of 1044. They may hope that, come the Tampas convention in August, Romney will have lost backing and be dumped by the party establishment, at which venue a different candidate might then be forced through.
     But the idea is highly unlikely: it would put the last touch on a Republican suicide that these primaries have already set up. That is the first pointer to come out of the ballot: the Republicans are weak and so is Romney. It is partly built into the system. The president in office always holds a sizable advantage, especially if he came to the White House four years earlier on a change of party there. In the last century only once has an incumbent from a party that had just won back the presidency failed to get re-elected. That was Carter in 1980.
     The figures reflect various electoral advantages enjoyed by any new president, even a weak one like Barack Obama. That explains why distinctly stronger politicians than those contending the Republican nomination today have hung back. Figures like the governors of New Jersey and Indiana, Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels, are waiting for 2016 when the match will be more open and they will be in with a chance. The second pointer from these primaries is the power of that wave of anti-politics which the Republicans themselves exploited at the mid-term polls in 2010 but now lashes back against them.
     Anti-politics breeds disaffection and translates as low electoral participation. In most of the states that voted on Tuesday the turnout was lower than in 2008. A rare exception came from Ohio, but even there only 1.2 million people went to the polls, little more than half those who took part in the democrat primaries four years ago. From January until now, 11.5% of the adult population has voted, versus 13.2 in 2008 and 12.2 in 2000. Abstention tends to drive candidates rightwards, in response to a radicalised and militant electoral grass roots. This spells political polarisation and makes it even harder to woo the independent centre which is needed every bit as much as full mobilisation of the solid core if one is to win an election.
     Political radicalisation and a low turnout interact with pointer number 3: the low social and demographic representativeness of the vote. What the Republicans have polled is solidly white and of a certain age. Going by the exit polls, 96% of those who voted in Ohio were white (across the country the figure is 75%, though 83% in that particular state), while 68% were over 45. Similar figures have been found in the other states that have voted so far. The contrast could hardly be more glaring with the democrat challenge in 2008 where a woman (Hillary Clinton) was pitted against an Afro-American (Obama): today’s Republican replica sees four males, all white, all distinctly over-50.
     This brings us to the fourth and last pointer from these primaries: the Republicans’ inability to intercept a change that is taking place across the United States. The change is demographic – Hispanics are now 16% of the population – but also cultural and with political implications. America may be conservative enough in terms of tax policy and welfare, as Obama found to his cost. But it is growing steadily more liberal on those ethical issues that mean so much to the sort of people who vote at Republican primaries. Topics that have taken on a kind of identity value with many Republicans, but meet with a quite different response from most of the population, especially the young.
     While Santorum thunders against a licentious and libertine America, over half the people say they are for recognition of gay marriages (the figure has doubled in a mere fifteen years), while three quarters of American women say they have used the very pill that inflexible Rick from Pennsylvania would like to see banned. It is hard to imagine clearer symbols of the gap between that minority (though not marginal) swath of America voting at present, and the country that will choose the president in autumn.

Mario Del Pero
(Bologna University)