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Santorum & Hawaii

Ok so watching the Republican slug fest last night, it was amazing how well Santorum did, considering that all the polls had him trailing Gingrich and Romney, turns out that he won, and Romney came in third (although it must be said it was a very close contest with each of the three picking 1/3 of the vote).  It is also telling that despite Romney superior cash position (Romney outspends two or three times over the combination of Gingrich and Santorum), that he does so poorly.  Romney will almost certainly win this contest (although people said the same thing about Clinton in 2008) but the cost may be substantial.  In this era of "video playback" it will be hard for him to walk back his comments.  He will also be unable to go after Obama's health care program (since it was largely modeled on Romney's own Massachusetts' plan).  I think it was the NYT that outlined that this primary was the cheapest in over a decade.

Most amazing was Romney's win in Hawaii, where the total number of votes cast in the primary was justs slightly less then 10,000 -- in a state with a 1.3 million population.  That's 0.77% of the Hawaiian population that cast its vote in the Republican primary -- not exactly huge support -- in fact Romney won by 2,000 votes...  In Alabama (population 4.5 million) almost 500,000 voted!

Anyway good fashion fun.



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