Estrategia de Romney y posibles escenarios

Nate Silver (New York Times):

Mr. Romney retains a reasonably large lead in New Hampshire for now. The danger is that, if Mr. Perry were to win Iowa convincingly, he could clear the field of other conservative candidates. New Hampshire has a lot of moderate and independent voters — but it is still majority conservative. And although Mr. Romney holds a solid lead over each of the individual conservatives, he does not hold a lead over them collectively: Mr. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich together have in excess of 50 percent of the vote there, based on a trendline constructed from recent polls of the state, as compared to 34 percent for Mr. Romney. If, for example, Mr. Perry were to knock out Mrs. Bachmann, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Cain by winning Iowa, picking up most of their votes, the New Hampshire contest would become very tight.



Mr. Romney has adopted a slow-and-steady strategy since the beginning of the campaign, one which has de-emphasized Iowa. Instead, the idea would be to pick up delegates in the early going in friendly territory, particularly in caucus states where his organizational and monetary advantages should give him some help. Although the race might remain tight for the first month or two of the primary campaign, Mr. Romney would then hope to grab some big prizes once states started to vote on a winner-take-all basis in the spring, including large coastal states where Mr. Romney’s relative moderation could be an advantage.

But the linchpin of that strategy has always been New Hampshire. If Mr. Romney does not win there, Republicans may decide that although Mr. Perry is not an optimal general election candidate, Mr. Romney has fallen too far behind him and it is best to rally around Mr. Perry rather than having a prolonged and bloody primary battle. There is also some chance that another moderate candidate who had performed relatively well in New Hampshire, like Mr. Huntsman or Mr. Giulaini, could lay claim to being the alternative to Mr. Perry. On a more fundamental level, the question would be how Mr. Romney could hope to beat Mr. Perry elsewhere on the map if he hadn’t beaten him in New Hampshire, which ought to be among Mr. Romney’s best states.

These concerns would be less acute for Mr. Romney if a candidate like Mrs. Bachmann won Iowa. She has less of a national profile and her victory might be viewed as more of a one-off. Mr. Perry, for instance, could well survive a second or third place finish there, hoping to regroup in South Carolina or Florida. That means that Mrs. Bachmann and Mr. Perry would continue to split the conservative vote for some period of time, allowing Mr. Romney to clear his New Hampshire hurdle at a minimum.

Unfortunately for Mr. Romney, Mr. Perry’s national surge does show some signs of transferring into Iowa. The only poll there since he officially entered the race shows him ahead of Mrs. Bachmann, with 21 percent of the vote to her 15 percent, with Mr. Romney stuck in between at 18 percent.

The question for Mr. Romney is whether his New Hampshire lead is robust enough to survive a win by Mr. Perry in Iowa. If not, Mr. Romney will need to involve himself more in Iowa. (...)