Expertos opinan sobre las opciones de Ron Paul

The Daily Caller:

Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul typically registers at around ten percent in national polls for the GOP presidential nomination, but surprisingly achieved a statistical tie for first place in a Bloomberg poll of Iowa voters released Tuesday. The result may indicate a path to the nomination for Paul.

“If Paul is going to make a breakthrough, he has to start in Iowa rather than a larger-turnout primary state like New Hampshire,” University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato told The Daily Caller.

“A caucus state like Iowa is tailor-made to maximize the vote for [a] candidate like Ron Paul,” Sabato said. ”He has a dedicated band of supporters who will show up to vote in three feet of snow.”

Sabato said that Paul could win in Iowa and other caucus states ”as long as four or five candidates remain strong and in the contest.” He categorized a Paul victory as “possible but somewhat unlikely,” citing the likelihood that Republican voters would not be ”easily transferable to Paul because of his distinctive stands on some foreign and domestic policies.”

Pollster John Zogby wrote last week that he “could see Paul gaining support, especially if Cain’s candidacy is blown up by sexual harassment charges.”

Zogby wrote that an October poll, conducted before the Cain allegations surfaced, “found Paul the expected leader among libertarians, but with Cain not far behind,” indicating a bloc that could collectively buoy Paul’s numbers in the event of a Cain collapse.

“He can win in Iowa and will probably stay in the race all the way,” Zogby told TheDC. “But it will be difficult for him to win the nomination because his several of his ideas are just too out of the mainstream of the Republican Party.”

Zogby noted that Paul “benefits from two factors, the first being an increase in the numbers of younger [voters] and intensity of his supporters. The second factor is that anti-government libertarians are running out of candidates to support.”

(...) Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain, however, told TheDC that he finds a Paul surge unlikely, even with the public-opinion vacuum created by sexual harassment allegations against Cain and Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s well-circulated “oops” gaffe.

McKinnon believes Paul’s 19 percent showing is “an absolute ceiling and he’s hitting it now.” According to McKinnon, ”Ron Paul has a very solid base, which are basically all libertarians, but it’s unlikely to grow beyond what he already has.”