Rick Santorum after barely losing to Mitt Romney in Iowa? "Eh, basically a tie." Santorum after just beating Romney on a recount? "MANDATE FROM GOD!"

BLOT: (19 Jan 2012 - 10:55:14 AM)

Rick Santorum after barely losing to Mitt Romney in Iowa? "Eh, basically a tie." Santorum after just beating Romney on a recount? "MANDATE FROM GOD!"

[I'm going to briefly talk about politics and statistics and rhetoric. If you are wondering why I am doing this to you, may I recommend Cracked.com's The Girl With a Dragon Tatoo [movie] in under 5 Minutes? Warning: There Be Spoilers!]

I'll leave it up to you to go and read about Iowa Caucuses and what they mean and who Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are and all that, I just want to point out the usual political enthusiasm to which a very minor victory can be translated. Upon very slightly losing [8 votes], Santorum went on record as saying that it didn't really matter and that was basically a tie!

Think about it from his perspective: you've done better than early predictions but still slightly lost numerically, by a number that could simply be chalked up to miscounts or nine people who were going to vote for you being sick that morning. Fair enough, any vote counting that is less than half a percent different [According to Wiki, there were about 121,500 voters so 8 would be maybe half a percent of a percent] should be called a tie. I'd say this is true up to 1-2% at least; too many vectors of potential error exist. And this was a contest were most of the voters did not show up, not even the ones registered to the party. By that consideration [and with presidential elections, where only half shows up at best, we never go by that consideration] we are looking at 100,000s of votes being against anyone there. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and now after a partial but mostly complete recount [some of the boxes are not certifiable, so therefore the results for Iowa this time are incomplete], the favor swung slightly into Santorum's camp. No biggie, right, it's all a tie?

'"The history books will read that the winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 is Rick Santorum. That's the bottom line," Hogan Gidley, an adviser to Mr. Santorum said in an interview Thursday. "This just goes to prove what we've been saying: We can take it right to Mitt Romney with a fraction of the resources and beat him. We can do the same to Barack Obama."'¹

Look, I know it's politics, where you have to take soundbites from your opponents talking to some supporters meeting in 1992 and make a single sentence sound like they are calling for the downfall of the nation, that's fine. I just reserve the right to make fun of it. I'll give it to you, Gidley, the history books truly will record that with an incomplete count, Santorum nearly lost to Romney and managed to only just squeak by with 0.002% of the total votes in his favor in a non-binding [worth no delegates] fluff event that awarded Mike Huckabee a solid 10,000 vote lead over Romney in 2008. Of course, the delight in seeing Santorum's camp implying a historical moment over a 42 out of 121,500 vote swing-around [and no doubt this will impact the momentum of the campaign at least slightly, with a potential boon to South Carolina after a poorer showing in New Hampshire], is only matched by the new word coming down from Romney's camp, and I bet even the non-psychic amongst you can guess what the new word is... "It's practically a tie."²

1: Ok, so he didn't say "MANDATE FROM GOD!", but it's early morning and I'm still cranky enough to be a smartass. And you know that there was at least a little prayer and "Praise Jesus" going on at the news. I'd be a little sad if the Santorum camp didn't have that moment.

2: I was hoping to find some juicy "MANDATE FROM GOD" moment from Romney after Iowa first swung his way, but didn't come up with anything. This made me sad.

Politics

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