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Jason B. is on vacation and Kavon offered that I take up the pen (or keyboard) in his stead.
As many of you know I’ve had my head down engaging with a new and exciting job for the Lighted Candle Society. This non-profit motif is new to me so I’m scaling back on the public political musings for a bit… but I thought I’d jump in for a quick sortie and throw a few timbers on the fire.
With that gambit of mixed metaphors… I’ll begin:
I’ve alluded to the near science behind primary elections previously. Basically it comes down to this: for every margin percentage point, the winner of the New Hampshire primary is 8% more likely to win the nomination. If Romney maintains his 9-10 point margin in New Hampshire he has an 80% chance of capturing the GOP win.
Here’s the root of the question:
Over at HH Patrick asks this question about Fred:
Now, don’t get me wrong. Voting is important. But doesn’t fervency count for a lot in a volatile primary situation?… A candidate’s openness to encouraging that kind of support, and his body language towards the grassroots, counts for a lot.
Patrick’s referring to the generous nods that Fred has been throwing towards bloggers.
As I understand it, the theory that Fred & Co. plan to employ involves trumping technology to victory instead of stumping through 99 Iowa counties. They plan to employ a kind of “trickle-up” motif where grassroots activists energize the same constituents that forced the hands against the immigration bill. More silicon mesh than pressing flesh… you get what I’m saying right?
So, my question is this: will a virtual campaign targeting the “new” grassroots trump the “traditional” grassroots? Or will the non-stop flesh-pressing and Mitt-Mobiling crank the decades of precedent and win the election? Or will Rudy surprise us all and deliver the first national primary victory? The odds are against Rudy and Fred but I’ll admit that times are changing. Thoughts?
July 11th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Here’s a twist:
McCain pulls out, and who gets his endorsement? Now, NOBODY wants it!
July 11th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I’d have to disagree with you on Rudy’s ground game. He has paid staffers in 12 states and has 12+ paid staffers in Iowa!
July 11th, 2007 at 9:31 am
“[N]ear science behind primary elections” = balderdash – as previously discussed.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I think the Romney team’s logic is flawed because this is not a traditional
primary calendar. Groundgame is not as important in CA or in FL or NY
the air war is more important in the big states. Not to disagree
but winning NH does not a nominee make. The last 2 GOP primaries
(excluding 2004) produced candidates who faild to win the nomination
July 11th, 2007 at 9:35 am
CK. Again, precedent and history is a powerful thing.
This is not some back-of-the-napkin musing by a blogger… the 8% figure comes from a peer-reviewed journal in academia. If I had to qualify something as “near science” that would be it. I’m not saying it can’t be upturned… I’m just identifying what “par-for-course” means.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Jonathan. Not to disagree but winning NH and IA does a nominee make. No candidate has lost NH and IA and gone on to win the nomination in over 30 years.
To reiterate: the New Hampshire effect is all about momentum and press.
Momentum: you win NH and IA and get the biggest bang for the buck in a cascade of wins to follow.
Press: you win NH and IA and get 2 weeks+ of free press when people are really paying attention.
It may indeed by a flawed strategy but NO ONE can say it isn’t the usual strategy.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Sorry, Justin, but I would have preferred to believe that your tongue was located somewhere near your cheek, and that next time you might use a smiley face or something so we all knew you were kidding, maybe joking on the square.
Peers review and publish all sorts of material that is either ridiculous on its face or, more frequently, susceptible to mis-characterization. Both are somewhat more likely in an area like this one (this isn’t particle physics or oncology).
Again, and even looking away from the flashing red lights that go on when someone uses a phrase like “near science,” statements like the one in question, complete with pseudo-scientific formulae, are, to put it plainly, ridiculous. All that can be said is that early primary results have been important historically. Everything else is putting a statistical shirt on a non-quantifiable dog.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:45 am
One more comment. As I pointed out in previous posts, the accelerated calendar may actual help Romney. Unless 15+ states move up their primary dates to be within a day of IA and NH Romney will still have at least 2 weeks of serious “winner” status (assuming IA, NH, and NV wins).
One of the studies that I cited indicated that historically it doesn’t matter much what the timing is… if the primaries are sequential the winner of IA and NH has a serious advantage.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:46 am
If it were just NH and IA before Super Tuesday, it may not mean as much this year. HOWEVER, you also have to factor in MI, NV, WY, FL, and SC. Romney is leading in IA, NH, and MI. He is an extremely close second NV (and possibly SC), and there are no polls for WY at this time. While Romney is struggling in FL, that may be the one early state that does not mean as much, because its delagates will split according to the results. If Romney can win IA, NH, MI, NV, WY, come in a close second in SC, and get a few delagates out of FL, I don’t see how he doesn’t end up as the nominee.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I’d be leaning more toward a traditional campaign verses a silicon campaign for this reason alone. The most reliable and numerous primary voters are older folks. They’ve been doing what they’ve been doing for many elections now. The majority are not as computer prolific as the younger generations. If the majority of primary voters respond best to a traditional ground game, then you’d better have one going.
Silicon mesh pressing is important, but it is not enough to win alone. A traditional ground game is absolutely necessary.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Florida is not proportional in the traditional sense. If you win one
of our 25 Congressional districts you take the at-large delegates from the
district but the state is winner-take-all. Doesn’t make much sense
to me either but that’s how its done. Also the Politico had a great article
on FL as relating to the GOP race here’s the link:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/4865.html
July 11th, 2007 at 9:55 am
CK – can you negate the following statements:
* No Republican candidate has lost NH and IA and gone on to win the nomination
* Historically, we can calculate, that for every margin % point over the nearest rival, the winner of NH has an 8% higher chance of winning the nomination
That is the entire premise of my post. The only way it can be refuted is by overturning 30 years of precedent. And I admit in my post that this can be done.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Since you’re so into statistics perhpas you should take a look at Lichtman’s 13 keys to the Presidency which have correctly predicted every election since 1860. It basically shows that the GOP is in big trouble. Romney has no shot of winning a general and Rudt and Fred are really our only hopes and even they need either Iraq to turn around or a big event like a 4rd conservative appointed to the SC, the capture/death of Bin Laden or a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to get the job done. That’s 150 years of precedent.
I thinj if national polls keep showing Rudy and or Fred more competitive with Hillary, that will help them out in the end.
As for your 30 years thing, I could just just as easily say that the GOP hasn’t gone with
-A 1 term governor
-A Mormon
-Some one from MA
and lots of other things
Every GOP candidate to win the WH has been from a state in the top 3 in EV(Both Bushes from TX and Reagan from CA. It holds up if you go further back as Nixon and Eisenhower both ran from NY although Nixon would count from CA as well)
Has anyone won the nomination while losing CA, NY and FL? I doubt it
The fact is that this nomination is going ot be different than the ones before and lots of things are going to happen. It’s really too early to say as so many thing can and will happen before January.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Justin:
going along with the 30 years logic. Then were does Fred Thompson
(to his supporters “The God-like Fred”) fit into the equation. He
has as much chance of winning the nomination as Rudy and he too is
downplaying both IA and NH.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:35 am
You hit on it Jonathan. That is my open question.
Here’s a test. Go and ask your neighbor what they know about the current campaign. My guess is they don’t read the blogs and they can probably only name 2 or 3 candidates. They will likely not be able to tell you where the polls currently stand and they certainly don’t know about the particulars about the issues being debated on our site.
They will probably calendar in their primary date a week in advance and start paying attention in January.
The Romney approach is the typical sequential primary approach: win in NH and IA in January, get a boatload of free press, gain a host of votes who want to be with a winner, and sail through to victory on Tsunami Tuesday.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am
While I think this race is very different from any other in the past, I think it is much easier to trust statistics for the primaries than the general election.
That said, I think there is another thing that favors Romney that gets overlooked: debates. As we get closer to the election, there are more and more debates, and more and more people watching them. The number of debates (more than 5 more before the election) favor Romney over any other candidate. While Giuliani is a good speaker, he can’t set the topic at a debate, this hurts him becuase he has to dicuss his liberal views. I don’t expect McCain to last much longer, so I don’t think he is a factor. Then there is Fred Thompson. Thompson is currently the biggest threat to Romney, considering he is a more well known, more traditional Conservative. However, can you imagine Thompson attending the debates? His look-at-the-ground, mumble, ramble, and “ah” and “um” style of speaking are not going to play well. He is dull, plain and simple. In addition, Thompson is going to face a tough road. Entering just before the debates, he is going to have to answer questions about his record.
As for winning the big states, firstly, I don’t think the Democrats can take away Florida from the GOP, particularly since Hillary is the likely nominee. However, even if the Democrats do win Florida if Romney becomes the nominee, Romney could easily make up for it by winning PA and MI – and that is not all that unlikely.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Justin, “30 years of precedent” would equal 7 or 8 campaigns, though there have actually been 8 since Iowan Republicans began holding their caucus. In 3 of those cases, the eventual Republican nominee ran unopposed: Including them in your sample masks the weakness of the argument. The vast precedent turns out to rest on 5 post-war elections in which the Iowa Caucus happened to guess right 3 times (Bush 43, Dole, Ford), and was wrong the other 2 times (picking Bush 41 in ‘80 over Reagan, Dole over Bush 41 in ‘88). You really could do just about as well flipping a coin.
As for the “each 1% margin…” formula, the notion that such a small sample could make for a prediction of such precision is completely absurd. Even to begin to calculate a meaningful statistical analysis (much less assign percentages with any degree of confidence), you’d need around 150 years of precedents, but that would presume that you’re willing to set aside the very strong reasons to doubt the usefulness of the exercise.
In 8 campaigns since 1976, the eventual winner of the Republican nomination has won either Iowa or New Hampshire. I bet you could pull states out of a hat for a long time before you ever found a pair that the eventual Republican nominee lost both of.
In other words, it’s a very weak precedent, especially when you consider that in at least 3 of those races the eventual winner was a foregone conclusion, and in 3 more of them the eventual winner was either an incumbent president or a virtual consensus candidate.
Again, I’m not saying that wins in Iowa and/or New Hampshire are less significant than late primary wins that tend merely to acclaim the victor of the already-decided race, just that there’s really very little to go on here just on the basis of numbers.
Before you start arguing that the early outcomes determine the race, you have to consider the extent to which the overall race influences any outcomes. Thus, it may very well turn out that this year, as in most other years and as one would expect normally to be the case, the strength of the eventual winner and weakness of the eventual losers will naturally lead to commensurate results in the early primaries. But it may also turn out that this time numerous factors – perceptions, big state front-loading, lack of an incumbent, internal party divisions, new media, the sheer hazard of human events, etc. – will sweep away such precedents more easily than the “must-win-NH” rules vis-a-vis nomination and eventual election were destroyed in ‘92 and subsequently.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Speaking of Lichtman, I was surfing around doing some research, and almost immediately hit on this Amazon blurb from ca. 2000:
July 11th, 2007 at 11:06 am
And Lichtman was right. His study deals with the popular vote and seeing as how no one had won the popular vote and lost the election since 1876 it was a pretty good bet to say Gore win would the elction if he won the popular vote, which he did.
If you look it, Romney is just about guaranteed to lose the popular vote and Rudy and Fred have better chances. Even their chances aren’t that great, though.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:19 am
on what grounds are you basing the assertion that “Romney is just about gauranteed to loose the popular vote”? If I recall, Romney won in MASS, when only 18% of the population is Republican.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Maybe, Jim, in a way, but the blurb is still a good example of the misuse of such ideas. I’d argue further that most of Lichtman’s “keys” turn out to be redundant in many if not most cases – e.g., strong economy + peace = popular incumbent – and that in similar instances they’re of little interest, since even a child could guess the likely outcome. On that note, THE WEEKLY READER poll – http://bjerga.blogspot.com/2004/10/weekly-reader-poll.html – holds up as well as most other indicators.
It’s precisely in the elections that are close enough to make you wish for guidance that the keys and most other supposed precedents will be least useful, Gore v Bush being the most recent example in a national election, Clinton vs the field one of the best in a primary fight. I have no idea how Lichtman analyzed other very close elections, like Kennedy v Nixon, but it’s easy, when the keys are so subjective or so easily re-explicable or modifiable, to force retrospective corroboration for them.
Anyway, what’s fun about politics is that we’re all continuously making new history – new precedents. As soon as anyone thinks they have “it” figured out, something comes along to prove the opposite, and factors that meant everything or close to everything in 1860 or even 1960 might mean nothing or close in 2008 – which is why we’ve mostly forgotten them.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:46 am
CK… I agree with you for the most part… especially your last paragraph.
Let me be clear: the title of the my post was a question, I caveat a Romney win with hypotheticals and I end with a host of queries. I rest my laurels on the answer to this inquiry: is this a traditional primary or not? If it is and Romney holds his double-digit lead… he wins. If not, I’m proven wrong.
We can compare left-handed candidates and candidate height… but we can’t ignore the fact that presidential campaigns in the past have always played the NH momentum game. Romney has made his bed with this strategy and it’s worked in the past. We will see.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Hello, all-
As always, many valid points made above. Here’s my two cents, as the individual who “finds much to admire in Senator McCain’s candidacy”… so I’ll start with my thoughts on his campaign:
1) The chaos in McCain’s campaign and McCain-related issues
I think that Justin put it very well in the original post, when he wrote:
“Senator McCain: Frankly, I’m shocked. How do you spoil and waste 7 years of Presidential build-up, organization, supporter lists, and serious ground game? I have no idea. Messrs. Nelson and Weaver can tell you but they won’t until the primary is over. Months ago I defended McCain saying he was here to stay. I am seriously stunned that he seems to be on the way out.”
I agree, 100%. I would have been astonished, if I had been told at the end of 2006 that he’d be in this predicament. As to precisely WHY this disaster has been taking place, I need to wait until more info comes out – the Politico and the Atlantic have been doing an outstanding job on tracking the mushrooming stories of staff departures, before I can draw definitive conclusions.
So leaving aside the HOW and WHY of the McCain campaign implosion for the moment, here’s how I think it affects the rest of the Republican field:
I speculate that the disappearance of McCain from the top-tier probably means good things for Rudy, and (by definition) bad things for FDT and Romney.
How it helps Rudy:
I still think that McCain and Rudy were competing for the same voters. Namely, Republicans who are desperate to avoid the loss of the White House (particularly to Hillary), and were willing to stomach some heresies in order to do so. They are the two candidates who are likely to fare best in November, and if McCain is no longer considered viable by January, I think Rudy scoops up much of his support.
Under the worst-case scenario for McCain, if he has to drop out entirely (either before or after actual voting begins in Iowa/NH/SC), I would be stunned if he didn’t endorse Rudy. They probably would have endorsed each other, if one had not beeen running, and they’re clearly genuine friends. Either would prefer to see the other as the nominee, if not himself. And I think that this is particularly true re FDT; there’s no way that McCain isn’t viewing his entry into the race as a tremendous betrayal of a long-term friendship.
2) The highly sophisticated debate on the importance of winning Iowa and/or New Hampshire…
I’ll leave these concise observations.
Other things being equal, it is certainly better to win (or do well) in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. This is not because their delegates counts are important, obviously – it’s the free media (and online money) that flows in, as a result of those victories.
Can you win the nomination (and general election) – on either side – without victories in those places? Sure. But you’d certainly want to have them in your column.
While I respect the amount of effort that is being plowed into these formulas, I don’t view politics as being easily measured by such quantitative tools. (It’s why I dislike the term “political science”.) You can measure poll support, votes, delegates, and money – but that’s pretty much all. You can’t quantify “candidate skills” – and even if you could, nobody would agree on precisely how much weight it should be accorded.
Reactions are welcome.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I think that it is not a traditional primary for 3 reasons
1.) the absense of a “heir apparent”
2.) the moving up of delegate-rich primary states
3.) the new media mediums (Internet, Blogs, YouTube, etc.)
Since it is a non-traditional primary season it will produce
a non-traditional candidate. Say the tough on terror pro-choice
Mayor of NY
July 11th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
To Jonathan:
1) This is true. The question for Romney here is: can he follow the path of Dukakis and Clinton (small state no name governors with single-digit national polling eking up on the competition through a NH/IA barnstorm)
2) I’m not convinced that this changes the traditional scenario. In fact, it may actually accelerate the NH effect by providing less time for 2nd and 3rd place finishers to regain momentum after early Romney wins
3) What is the average age and demographic make-up of a GOP primary voter? What is the average age of a blog-reading, You-Tube watching Internet GOP voter? Do the two match up? Do they have to? I’m not sure they do match up and I’m not sure the “trickle up” effect is real. In my mind, the blogosphere influence is about one election cycle to early to make a difference.
Good points though. They could go either way.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
#20 — Yes, he ran as a liberal in a liberal state when he won in Massachusetts. This was pro-choice, “I’m-better-on-gay-rights-than-Ted-Kennedy” Mitt Romney. Don’t be ridiculous.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
I like the Romney playbook at winning the early states (IA, NH, NV, WY, MI) and letting the momentum take you to victory on 2/5.
I just get tired of the exused from the anti Romney crowd. Excuses like:
1. “sure Romney won CPAC, he bused em in from Utah to do it”
2. “sure Romney raised more $$ 1Q, he has rich mormon friends”
3. “sure Romney won Ames, he was unopposed as Rudy, McCain, and FDT didnt compete there”
4. “sure Romney is leading in IA and NH, he is the only one running ads”
later we will hear
1. “sure Romney won IA, but who cares, Rudy didnt even try to and he is leading in the national polls”
2. “sure Romney also won NH, but did you see Rudy winning in the national polls”
3. “sure Romney won NV and MI too, but he isnt as electable as Rudy is”
4. “…wait, what is going on here, Rudy is more electable than Mitt and Mitt keeps winning, why are we doing this.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
TLG,
I’ve seen you go off on people who accuse Rudy of being a liberal, when it would be more accurate to call him a social liberal. Hypocrisize much?
Here’s Romney’s campaign platform from 1994: http://www.politico.com/pdf/wmr_1994_senate_flier_side_1.pdf This was very similar on the major issues to his 2002 campaign. He was pro-Roe and conservative down the line on all other issues.
And just as an aside, Romney’s quote (which you incorrectly paraphrased), claimed he would be more effective at advocating equal treatment (not marriage) for gays because everyone expects Kennedy to say stuff like that. A Republican could actually turn heads.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Well, when Rudy wins NY, FL, CA, IL, OH, PA, and NJ I guess we’ll
start hearing “well Romney won the first two” In the end what counts
is the number of delegates a man has at the end of the day and I’ll
take FL over IA anyday of the week. I’m not anti-Romney I’m just
pro-Rudy
July 11th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Yes he was pro-choice, but he was never for Gay marriage, as some have said. Gay Rights? he admits that he is against discrimination based on sexuality, but that is not a liberal position, so to speak, at least not one that is exclusive to liberals.
But back to the bigger point, why are people so quick to write off Romney in the general election? Think about it, half of the country won’t vote for Hillary. Romney already does relatively well against Hillary, even though his name recognition is not higher than 60%. What facts do you have to prove that he would loose in the general?
As for the traditional vs. e-campaign, I think the traditional wins. Remember, this is only the first GOP primary race since the internet became big – the Democrats went through the same thing in 2004. Dean tried to make his campaign very high-tech, but it didn’t work. The traditional, meet-the-voters, shake hands, walk in parades style campaign is still the winner.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
or dumping $6 million in ketchup profits against a screaming loon
July 11th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Five reasons why I believe it will take unforeseen scandals to prevent a Hillary-Rudy general election:
1. The media want the match-up that produces the greatest drama and storyline, which will, in turn, generate an increase in ratings and readership.
2. The NY/NJ and CA media want their February 5th primaries to be not just relevant, but to play the role of kingmaker…and the Chicago and Florida press will do their part to set the ‘quasi-national primary’ narrative in motion.
3. Hillary is trailing behind Edwards in Iowa. If this holds up, the media will have to diminish and downplay the results in Iowa’s caucuses to propel her to the nomination. This would serve the double purpose of also helping Rudy and killing Romney in the process.
4. Michael Bloomberg has all but promised to enter the race and guarantee a GOP loss if a conservative with the views of Romney were to win the nomination.
5. The purple swing state of Minnesota just today became the 18th state to move its primary to February 5th.
July 11th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Huh? what? to point 4. Can you elaborate?
July 11th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Aron:
Florida is before the “national primay” we have Jan. 29th set as the
date, the national primary sorta lets people skip FL which is the
opposite of what we want.
July 11th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I think we need to look at a few factors of the e-campaigns. Please do not take my numbers here as authority. They are off the top of my head from several readings some time ago. I may be way off the target. I only want to point out the *rough* influence that e-campaign has at this:
1) What is the present percentage of American population having the high speed connection? Can someone please confirm this? Last I recall, it was not over 60%.
2) Out of those with high speed connection, what is the percentage of the population that use the internet as the solo or major sources of information? Again, last I heard (off top of my head) the older population is more likely to take the information on internet with grain of salt then the young generations. Since these older population compose about 1/3 of Americans, let’s assume the same, 1/3 of 60%. That takes off 20%, leaving us with 40% having access to information on internet with high degree of trust (vs 60% not)
3) And finally, what party are those 40% composed of? We were told that the younger population intend to vote as Democrats or lean toward that side. Let’s say, 60% of those 40% will vote on Democratic side. There then are, umm, 16% of Americans who vote as Republicans (or lean that way) that depends heavily on the internet of which they have fast access for some researches on the candidates.
4) And, yes, there’s two more; with the general election, only about half of Americans vote. With primaries, it is my understanding there are even less voters. I do not have the number, so I am assuming here that 1/3 vote in primaries. That leaves us with only about 5% of primary voting Republicans (leaning, too) who follow e-campaign.
5) 5% may vote on Republicanic side who have access to information on internet which they trust. But do they have the time to do homework? Many of them have different priorities than us political junkies who attend this site daily. Justin, an author of this post, is a good example – his priority shifted recently. I won’t expect more than 1% who would follow the race that early. A couple of weeks before first primary? Definitely, more, maybe 2 or 3%. But their study won’t be in depth. After the early prinmaries, it is likely that they will check out 2 or 3 top candidates who won those primaries before their own primary. At most, we could expect 5%, but I doubt it.
I hope some of you can provide some better numbers than I, but in any case, I do not think we are at point yet where e-campaign would make that much of a different. Let me be clear that I do believe it will play a bigger role in this election cycle than in the past, but I do not see us at the point yet where we can count on it heavily enough to win the nomination. Every vote count, so 5% will help, and it may supply the tie-breaking votes for some districts. But traditional campaign still matter way much more than e-campaign.
July 11th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
RON PAUL RON PAUL RON PAUL
Say it, know it, believe it.
ronpaul2008.com
July 11th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I gotta agree with CK’s attitude on the “science” here.
We all would love to know whats gonna happen. And since the bottom line is, nobody knows, and nobody will know till it happens, there is a constant fervent search for some magic formula that could help us transcend this unavoidable fact.
Looking to history has some gut level appeal, as we search to discern the trend that might have been operating in the past, and then try to project it into the future. It is all speculation though. One could devise any number of models, filled with undisputable facts, that would lead to a prediction for any concievable outcome. One could even get it “peer reviewed”
Reminds of the situation in baseball, when the batter is 0 for the last 10.
Does he suck, or is he due?
The answer to that always has more to do with what you hope for than anything else.
July 11th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Justin,
Re: Point 4 in #32
Former Bloomberg Adviser: ‘08 Run ‘80% Probable’ if Parties Nominate Extremists
March 09, 2007
ABC News’ Gary Langer Reports: At an event last night sponsored by the New York Chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Ester Fuchs – a Columbia University professor and, until recently, an adviser to New York Mayor Bloomberg – speculated that Bloomberg would run for president as an independent if both parties nominated candidates from their “extreme wings.”
The example she gave was Romney and Edwards. With those two as their parties’ nominees, she said, it was, in her view, “80 percent probable” that Bloomberg would run. He’d have to be convinced that there was enough space between the two nominees for an independent to drive through.
Clearly this was Fuchs’ own hunch, not any approved pronouncement. But she is in a position to know something about Bloomberg’s thinking. She was his “special adviser for governance and strategic planning” in his first term, then served on his re-election campaign as policy adviser for the second-term agenda, and was appointed by Bloomberg to serve as chair of the city’s Charter Revision Commission.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/03/fmr_bloomberg_a.html
From a follow-up article, dated March 12th in the New York Sun, by Jill Gardiner:
Bloomberg Said 80% In, If Others Are Far Out
“Larry Sabato, political science professor at the University of Virginia, said a Bloomberg candidacy was a long shot because the major parties are not likely to nominate “extreme” candidates. He also noted that it would be a tough sell to get Americans to abandon their political parties and vote for an independent.”