And another one gone...

Bill Richardson has called it quits, and with that move, he officially becomes a leading VP candidate. This move isn't much of a surprise, considering he's hardly made an impact in the 2 contests in which he's participated. Meanwhile, Fred Thompson has stated that he's "making his stand" in South Carolina. If he doesn't fare well there, he will almost certainly drop out of the race. Giuliani also desperately needs good things to happen. My guess is that he'll decide on whether to stay in the race following the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5.

I was also mistaken about Romney's fortunes: Wyoming held its Republican caucuses on Jan 5th, which Romney won. So right now we have 3 contests with 3 winners. What makes this situation interesting is that the GOP is punishing New Hampshire, Wyoming, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina for violating party rules regarding primary scheduling, so those states won't be as well represented: this may end up throwing off expected delegate counts. Given how much of a toss-up this race currently is, the effects may be wide-reaching.

When I was watching MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primaries, I picked up on an interesting comment by Pat Buchanan: he said that Giuliani and McCain were essentially on the same page campaign-wise with regard to Bush's policies on terrorism and Iraq. He went on to say that when push comes to shove, the only real difference between Giuliani and McCain is that Giuliani is a one-issue candidate, whereas McCain is more well-rounded. Assuming voters agree with him, this could be very bad for Giuliani and very good for McCain. The numbers seem to support this, since McCain's backing is growing while Giuliani's is shrinking.

Ron Paul provides an interesting X-factor here. Normally, in primaries and caucuses, the bulk of the electorate are those active in their given parties (although states with open primaries do tend to get more independents.) Thus, when one candidate climbs, there is almost always a corresponding drop in another candidate or candidates: if Huckabee's support climbs 10%, 7 to 8% of that will come from other candidates (the remainder should be former undecideds.) What makes Paul's situation is that the bulk of his support are not party activists, but rather activists who otherwise would not be participating. The normal model will show 100 voters at a site, with those voters shifting their allegiances around, with maybe 1 or 2 of those 100 supporting Paul. The Paul model brings an additional 10 voters to the site, giving him 11 or 12 votes out of 110. Those 10 votes he brings otherwise would not have voted. At least, that's my read on it. It's the only explanation I can see why his primary results have been about twice what pollsters anticipated.