January 31, 2012 marks the Florida GOP primary, where the boring, safe pick of Mitt Romney goes up against blustering philanderer Newt Gingrich in a battle royale of mediocrity. There is also Santorum and Paul, and the less to be said about them, the better.
For the nerdiest of politicos, you can check out the raw poll numbers at Real Clear Politics. The short of it is that polls originally showed Romney ahead in the state by anywhere from 2-40 points, but Gingrich began pulling ahead in a few last week. At this point however Romney has regained the lead by Gingrich’s ineptitude and the fact that most right wing establishment people really really really don’t like Newt Gingrich. Therefore Romney will most likely take Florida, with what I believe will be a rather thin margin around 5-7%. Florida has been seen as Romney territory for a long time due to the demographics of the GOPers in the state, and despite the brief Gingrich surge, Romney has regained the momentum in both the race and the debates.
On the other side of things, Current Commander in Chief and Denard Robinson fan Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Romney in Florida by 8 points, and is now leading national polls with an RCP average of 2.2%. While this is a thin margin compared to the other candidates, this is definitely a promising turn of events. As College Dems, we truly need to do everything in our power to maintain this advantage because we cannot let Mitt Romney or any other GOP candidate have the White House. What Republican governors have pulled against unions, women, and basically everyone except the 1% of richest Americans, is enough to give any rational person pause. It’s definitely time to put all of our energy as an organization into ringing every phone, knocking every door, registering tons of voters, and talking to everyone we can about the need to re-elect Barack Obama and all the democrats down the ticket this November.