Santorum makes last-hour gain in Iowa
The Iowa caucuses begin tonight, and the startling news for LGBT voters is the dramatic increase in support for the field’s most anti-gay candidate, Rick Santorum.
Santorum, who has polled near the bottom with only single-digit support for months on end, is now in a tight three-way race with Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for the mantle of victory in Iowa.
The Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night showed Santorum with 15 percent –behind Romney with 24 percent and Paul with 22 percent. (The margin of error is four percent.) The Register suggested Santorum’s support may actually be higher because his numbers were higher during the last two days of the four-days polling.
“Looking just at the final day of polling,” stated the Register, Santorum “was just one point down from Romney’s 23 percent on Friday.”
The survey polled 602 likely Republican caucus goers December 27-28, and another 302 on December 29-30.
The Register poll also indicated that Santorum’s supporters showed a greater likelihood of showing up at the caucuses (76 percent) than those of other candidates.
Polls also indicated that 41 percent of Iowa Republicans are undecided going into the caucuses.
The Iowa Republican Party, which runs the caucuses, said it will be reporting the results for Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, “No Preference,” and “Other.” Notably missing from the list, of course, is openly gay candidate Fred Karger.
I would not worry too much about Santorum. There is close to zero chance he’d be nominated and even if he were, the chances in the general election are slim. I think his uptick is due to the zealot-factor. That is, those who are very committed to a cause, while a minority compared to the State’s population, have a high-percentage turnout. A hundred-percent of ten people does not beat twenty-percent of a thousand people.
It is striking to hear him, and other ultra-right wing religious conservatives, speak about social issues that have nothing to do with fiscal matters. It sounds like the talk heard in the 1950s and 1960s in the South when it came to race related issues. Just appalling. Sadly, they actually believe their rhetoric and that might be the scariest part of all. Few situations are more dangerous than a crowd of people who think they have God on their side.