The Nevada caucus belongs to Mitt Romney, but watch for Ron Paul: by my reading, pollsters are underestimating his appeal
Mitt Romney won a wide and deep victory in Florida. He won most demographics and carried the state of Florida by 14.5 percentage points. The limited polling we have for Saturday's Nevada caucus indicates that Romney is heading towards his largest win of the nomination season.
A look across the aggregates of 538, HuffPollster, and a simple average of the only two polls to come out in the last week all come to the same conclusion: Romney gets over 50% of the vote and leads Newt Gingrich by about 25 percentage points. Ron Paul is in third, with Rick Santorum is a very distant fourth.
The only question I have regarding the polls is whether Ron Paul will do better than expected. For those who have been following my post election wrap-ups, you may remember that in the last three contests (New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida), the candidate with the highest polling error has been Ron Paul. His young supporters are difficult to poll. In both South Carolina and Florida, the polls were too optimistic for Paul's chances, but in New Hampshire, Paul's percentage of the vote was underestimated by 3.9%.
Considering that Nevada's caucus awards delegates on a purely proportional basis, a New Hampshire-type error could gain Paul an extra delegate. But will it happen?
Let's remember that caucuses are low turnout affairs. In 2008, only 44,315 people voted in the Nevada caucus. With that small a voting population, it's very difficult for pollsters to get an accurate reading of the electorate. The polling for the Republican Nevada caucus was nothing short of atrocious in 2008 (though polling for the Democratic side was far better). The polling for the similarly low turnout 2012 Iowa caucus produced the greatest candidate polling error this year, at over 5%.
Let's also keep in mind that Paul has done better in every contest this year relative to his percentage of the vote in the same contests in 2008.
In fact, he's at least doubled his percentage in every state so far. As Paul received 13.7% of the vote in the 2008 Nevada, I'd expect (without looking at the polling data) that he would garner closer to 20% of the 2012 vote. This belief is reinforced by Paul's great organization in the state.
One thing we definitely know is that Romney's victory has been all but guaranteed for months. Nevada's large Mormon population, which will vote on the order of 80%, to perhaps as high as 95%, for Romney, makes this one of Romney's easiest victories. Indeed, the fact remains that Romney hasn't won in any state that he hasn't been expected to – and Tuesday's non-binding Missouri primary will see him, once again, facing a more conservative-leaning elecorate.