Election Update, 3-13-12

The big story of the night is that Rick Santorum won primaries in both Alabama and Mississippi despite trailing in polls in both states.  More accurate than the polls were predictions based on demography -- the results continued to be starkly different by geographic region.

The obvious questions regarding tonight's results are: 1.) Will Gingrich drop out now?; and 2.) Does Santorum actually have a chance against Romney?

It's too early for a definitive answer to either, but both look far more likely than they did just a few hours ago.  Romney has huge delegate, organizational, and financial advantages, but no longer looks that much more electable than Romney.  In hypothetical head-to-head match-ups with Obama, Santorum loses by an average of 6 points while Romney loses by an average of 3.

Exit polls in both states indicated that voters who wanted the most conservative candidate tended to vote for Santorum while those who wanted the most electable candidate tended to vote for Romney (50 and 52% of the voters in Mississippi and Alabama said that Romney's positions were "not conservative enough" while 49 and 46% said Romney was most likely to defeat Obama).

The split over electability versus conservativeness may partially explain why former first lady Barbara Bush recently said that this is "the worst campaign I've ever seen in my life . . . I hate the fact that people think 'compromise' is a dirty word".

Meanwhile, President Obama may be more vulnerable in November than many thought just a few weeks ago.  The latest tracking polls reveal a drop in his approval ratings, with the NYT/CBS polls reporting just a 41% approval rate.  The same poll has Obama up only 4 points in a hypothetical match-up with Santorum.

And it could always get worse, particularly if oil prices continue to rise.  The Economist writes that "More expensive oil is, for now, doing little harm to global growth" but "if the Strait of Hormuz is threatened, the resulting surge in oil prices will spell the end of the global recovery".