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Romney has a victory in Ohio within his grasp

March 5th, 2012

Will it be the same in other “Super Tuesday” states?

The above are some of the tweets from the US pollster, Public Policy Polling, about its surveys last night in the key states of Ohio and Tennessee which vote tomorrow.

Very helpfully for political punters awake at 0345 GMT in the UK the firm tweets a mass of information almost as soon as it gets it.

Ohio was one that Rick Santorum appeared to have in the bag. Many are saying that a Romney victory here could mark the end of Santorum’s challenge thus making a Mitt nomination even more inevitable.

As can been it’s looking very close and Romney could edge it and has a fighting chance in Tennessee. The most revealing statistics that PPP have provided is Romney’s lead in both states with voters who have decided in the past few days.

If that’s happening in Ohio and Tennessee then there could be an outside chance of a shock in Oklahoma as well.

My betting has been adjusted accordingly. Ladbrokes have 2/5 on a Romney victory in Ohio and the same price on him winning a majority of the ten contests tomorrow.

@MikeSmithsonOGH
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  • MrsB

    You’d be associated with Lord Monckton.

  • Anonymous

     I should hope that they would not be reversed.

    The state has some great utility in doing things that can only  be done collectively. Defence for example.

    While private enterprise cannot provide everything, and I wouldn’t want a US style health system for example, experience tells us that putting the state in control of spending is generally less effiecient than individuals spending their own earnings.

    Certainly, the state should never occupy the position it does now wher it spends more than than 50% of GDP.

    So I would hope that at the end of all this upheaval we could find a better balance between state spending and private enterprise. One in which the state uses a certain amount of private supply for certain services at a better price and with more flexibility than it can provide them itself, while retaining control over things which are better provided collectively like the commssioning of Health and medical access, defence, general infrastructure, border control etc.

  • Anonymous

    Basic lack of judgement is
    selling gold at $200, costing billions
    cocking up bank regulation, causing recession
    introducing 10p rate,
    abolishing 10p rate – costing billions.
    Ruining the pensions industry, only costing 100 billion.
    Overpayment of Tax credits, causing massive suffering
    Corporation tax threshold, encouraging individuals becoming private companies – losing billions.
    Promising never to create a housing bubble,
    creating a housing bubble.
    and
    Giving Fred Goodwin a knighthood, adding insult to injury.

  • Jonathan

    Disraeli would be broken hearted if he knew about the coalition.    I fear the policy on universal benefits and tax allowances will create…

    “Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets: the rich and the poor.”

  • Marquee Mark

    It is not the lack of specific policies that is fatal.  It is that there is absolutely no direction of travel with the current Labour Party.  They alter course almost daily.  

    If there was an election now, they would rush around, looking for anything to put in their manifesto.  Their core offering to the voters would make the Cones Hotline look profound.

    Until that changes, the Labour lead in polls is wholly untroubling.

  • MrsB

    So one less reason to oppose gay marriage then!  :)

  • Anonymous

     Yes, and the Revenue in the UK are doing a full investigation of Ecclestone and the Bambino trust. Last time, only a few years ago, a similar investigation fizzled out for some reason. This time I don’t think it will. Although what it will find who can tell?

  • francis

    Yes but but you forgot to say the the Labour Party makes political gain out of the cuts. Labour wastes money on pet diversity projects instead of financing essential ones, the Tories cut the funds but then Labour keeps the funding the unwanted diversity projects by cutting funding for the essential services and then puts all the blame on the Tories. This is all spun by the Guardian and BBC filth so people will believe it.

    The Tories (and Lib Dems) need to understand what Labour’s motives are – their motives are not fairness or equal opportunities, Labours priorities are simply more and more mass immigration together with all the red tape that goes with it. Only THEY benefit from it and don’t give a fig about the consequences and don’t about their ethnic pets either.

  • moses

    Have to laugh at the lefties on here. Moaning about this tax and that tax.

    The three most cynical decisions of the last 20 years have been

    a) Gordon Browns 10p tax removal promoted as a victory
    b) Gordon Browns implementation of the 50p tax band six weeks before getting thrown out of office.
    c) Building to carriers while cancelling aircraft and building in clauses that makes it more expensive to cancel than to buy.

    All are bad but the 50p tax rate was a wanton attempt to destroy potential to attract business to the UK. It was burnt earth for those that followed and was the most evil ruinous cynical double standard political ploy played by Labour and Brown on the United Kingdom. If this was a good idea he had 13 years to implement it but he knew the advantages of doing it before he left office.

    Labour in it simply for Labour despite their consistent hand wringing. 
    Vote them back at your peril.

  • Max

    The economic picture has improved greatly over the last couple of months and we are definitely not going to fall into a double dip recession. UK business confidence has definitely increased as well and hopefully the contraction in business investment over Q4 will be reversed in the first quarter of this year. I would definitely like to see a few pro business measures in the budget, but not at the expense of the public finances.

    I have been meaning to contact Mike about writing a column about the upcoming budget and what I think businesses would like to see, and whar tools he chancellor has at his disposal to win votes and still maintain the confidence of the markets. I’ll have to do it when I get back from Japan.

  • http://twitter.com/MorrisF1 Morris Dancer

    That’s slightly catch-22. Hamilton would only go to Mercedes if they’re either good enough to win races this season or look like they will be imminently, be in that case the odds on Schumacher re-signing, rather than resigning, will be short.

    The only way I can see that happening is if the Mercedes is good enough but Schumacher is beaten by a large margin by his team mate.

  • http://twitter.com/duGarbandier du garbandier

    my god! why didn’t you say so earlier?

    see you later pb folks

  • Plato

    “You’d be associated with Lord Monckton.”

    Other than disagreeing about the validity of AGW – what do you have against Lord Monckton?

    Does his membership of UKIP make the party a *bad thing* ?

  • Anonymous

    What a mine of information you are?  Is there any reason you need to know that, or does client confidentiality prevent you from answering?

  • Anonymous

    ‘…the Tories cut the funds but then Labour keeps the funding the unwanted
    diversity projects by cutting funding for the essential services and
    then puts all the blame on the Tories’.

    This is essentially the reason for the introduction of the Poll Tax. Labour local authorities were able to borrow money and spend it on political rather than administrative projects. In the change to Community Charge this was legislated against, (i.e. the budgets were supposed to balance), and the point was that with everybody paying the same charge it would be clear which councils were wasting taxpayers money and overspending.

    They miscalculated, they didn’t realise that local government is just invisible to most voters so that when they see the bill, all they saw was the central governement and that was who got the blame. They sought to make local government accountable, but local government, with the help and direction of the Labour leadership, managed to turn it back on them by being even more profligate than they had been before. It wasn’t only Labour local councils who were guilty either.

    History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce so I’m told..

  • Anonymous

    Do either Lord or Lady Sugar (etc) bother to fill in and claim their fuel allowance?  Likewise their bus passes?

  • Plato

     You missed Gordon reducing the salary of the PM that he bequeathed to his successor.

    A cheap shot.

  • G!

    To be fair to Romer and Romer, the paper is actually interested in estimating income elasticity (0.19) and seemingly only shoved in the laffer curve estimate to get some press.  Interesting that there seems to be some consensus on this short run elasticity.

    Do you have a link for the effects of the 50p tax? I’ve been looking for some decent quality data on it for a while. (Because I’m really cool.)

  • Plato

    LordSugar
    @piersmorgan yes I am the editor. Got any tips how I can fake the front page. I’m thinking of someone doing a pee on model of your head .

    !!!!!!!

  • Andy Cooke

    I’m just off to assess an exercise, but will try to answer later.  In short, though, the details I have are mainly gleaned from news sources (taking the data they provide rather than their (usually totally predictable) commentaries).

  • Anonymous

    I do not see the Falklands being a rationale one way or the other for conventional forces.  There are 1200 troops of all sorts on the island, I suppose we could add a couple of hundred more without too much trouble.
    Given reasonable intelligence I think our submarine could sink a couple of transport ships (if the Argentinians actually had any) and inflict unacceptable casualties on them before they ever landed.  The idea is to stop an invasion not to retake the islands.

    Always assuming Argentina wanted to break international law.

    Given an independent Scotland we would have to decide if we could afford to maintain the same size of armed forces withing a reduced GDP.  I think not.  The Scottish regiments would have to go and maybe a couple of extra battalions raised in lieu, but it strikes me our defence spending would have to lose a couple of billion.
    I think though that our Trident subs could be accommodated in English ports.
    Where we might gain is US money building a new facility to replace Holy Loch.

    Such a scenario might cause us to sensibly re-evaluate just what sort of nuclear deterrent suits us best.

  • Anonymous

    ‘patriots’?

    Was it patriotic to run up a 38 billion black hole in Labour’s defence budget? Labour treated defence like garbage so there may be an appropriate juxtaposition in your post.

    Whatever were Labour’s plans for defence, they depended on spending either borrowed money (masses of it) or money that did not exist at all. In other words fantasy patriots.

    Both Coalition defence and the local government projects are sustained and prioritised within their relevant budgets.

  • Anonymous

    I see the Master Spammer is at it again. 

    Principle 13c – A propaganda theme must be repeated

    Principle 14 -
    Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

    a. They must evoke desired responsesb. They must be capable of being easily learnedc. They must be utilized again and again

  • Anonymous

    No, what I’d like is for as much money as possible to be saved by cutting out waste and non-essential spending before gouging the “wealthy” for even more in taxes to pay for Labour’s profligacy while in office.

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