Did Santorum Beat Gingrich in Mississippi due to Democrat Prank Voting? Alabama?

GOP being Punk’d?

We know that Democrats are crossing over in open primaries, such as Mississippi and Alabama, in order to vote for Rick Santorum, a big union candidate, their votes intended to throw the Republican National Convention into a contested balloting process.

This tactic was written up at the Daily Kos. [Edit, yes, as a prank, both to send the convention into “chaos” in their minds and to promote a crippled and in their opinion, ridiculous candidate, hoping he will be nominated.]  Big union money has even invested for the Santorum campaign. [Edit: link]

Pardon me for not having all the pertinent facts and I confess I don’t even have time to search for them all, today, to say nothing of presenting and formatting them, here. Can you help? Place further information into comments?

Santorum in Jackson, Mississippi, photo: Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Santorum in Jackson, Mississippi, photo: Rogelio V. Solis, AP

If memory serves me correctly, CNN’s John King last evening pointed out that according to their exit polling, about six to eight percent of Alabama voters called themselves Democrats. However, I did not find a breakdown by party at the exit poll pages in cnn.com. That seems odd in itself, eh?

And if that many Democrats were willing to tell exit pollsters what they did, how many more just walked by them, refusing to be polled? If you were a prankster, voting in such a case, would you want to be examined by a pollster? Maybe some would. Maybe more would not.

CNN’s exit polls (for Mississippi and for Alabama) and the actual vote counts may be found at their site (and perhaps others have published exit polls, please tell me if you find any). Santorum’s final edge over Gingrich was approximately two percent in Mississippi and six percent in Alabama. Theoretically, both of these tallies could be within the margin of pranking.

Also, looking into the pre-election polling and comparing that to the results, we find that Santorum did significantly better in Michigan and Ohio too. Phone polls before the Alabama and Mississippi primaries even tended to have Santorum coming in third! [Edit: and not very close the lead.]

Yet, Santorum won.

In each case, the candidate with the most evident momentum and the most instances of being in first place in pre-election polling, Newt Gingrich, finished second.

What experts are looking into this?

Or are the media and pundit experts who are, keeping it to themselves, complicit with the pranking?

There are also rumors of voting equipment malfunctions. Perhaps I can update this entry this evening, after looking into that.  Gotta run; don’t even have time to proof this right now. [Edit: now proofed and it needed to be!]

Edit: see in Gulag Bound, “Democrats Organized for Rick Santorum in Missouri too,” Jack Cashill, March 15, 2012.

Edit: see, “Newt hits Santorum on union votes,” in Politico for more on Santorum’s union connection. It includes this video:


 

Meanwhile, here is third place Mitt Romney explaining just before last night’s vote tallying, how Santorum’s campaign is at its “desperate end.” Loser.



Comments

  1. You’re calling Seantorum a Big Union Candidate? The Teamsters can’t stand him and spent millions to defeat him in Pennsylvania. You just have to accept the fact that a man who is reviled by the Left and the GOP establishment has broad cross-over appeal. This includes fiscal conservatives, values voters, the teaparty voters, and blue-collar workers, I know because I am one. If you don’t believe me look at the exit polls from Ohio. This true battleground state tells the whole story.

  2. Fifthinstructor says

    You have got to be kidding…or not live in the south! Democrats don’t switch parties very easily here for ANYTHING. Santorum won it by plain hard work…look at the hours he spent on the ground in Alabama.

    • Seriously, fifth instructor???? No one is saying dems switched parties. These were open primaries meaning you don’t have to be a republican to vote in a republican primary. The same scenario as MI, KS, and OH. Look for the same thing to happen in MO which is a union state. Caucuses will be held on 3/17 with the largest urban areas holding theirs on 3/24. I know in my district you only have to state you are a republican. Only those people who are democratic public office holders will be turned away. The funny thing is this guy actually thinks that he could count on their support in November. He really is clueless.

  3. My first experience with the electronic voting machines, I am very cautious, I voted with an machine, since you don’t get a print out of your vote, at least go over your vote again and make sure it is correct, my experience was this, I voted and went back to check, my vote have changed against what I voted for,In all things, most importantly the candidate I voted for, I went through this process three times, and then reported it , I was given another machine, I called the RNC to report my findings. I am not certain anything was done.

    • Thank you, Genevieve. I am wondering how you could tell your vote was changed….?

      • Arlene, she told you how she could tell. Let me explain it a little clearer. With the voting machine, she touched the the boxes beside the candidates she wanted to vote for, ok?. When she touched the boxes, a check mark appeared which displayed that candidate was the one she was selecting. However, prior to hitting the big red VOTE button, she started over from the beginning to verify she got her ballot right. Perhaps she did this to make sure she didnt miss anyone? When she checked over the ballot, she was shocked to see the ballot was not as she had filled out. It had changed automatically so she had to continue trying to alter the ballot before casting her vote.

  4. Elsewhere Dems voted for Santorum not because he was union, but because in their minds he’s an idiot and has no chance of beating Obama. The prank is to accentuate the loser in order to defeat the potential winner (Romney in their minds). I too find it interesting that Gingrich was ahead in polls in both MS and AL, and yet Santorum won. It certainly should be looked into, but the bottom line is that those polls were so close to be within the margin of error.

    While it’s true that Santorum worked very hard in those two states, as he has done in every state he has won, So has Gingrich. I would hazard a guess that if Romney wasn’t in the race, Gingrich would garner more of Romney’s votes than Santorum; so Santorum has no business asking Gingrich to get out. This race isn’t over yet. What is clear is that GOP voters prefer a conservative over a moderate, and the one who should be dropping out is Romney.

    • I am VERY skeptical of our country ever having an honest election again. Gingrich should have won, I agree. The dems are without fail notoriously cheating and stealing. You can always tell who they don’t want to face in Nov. They don’t want to face Gingrich! And, YES, we don’t want Romney (OBAMNEY)!!!

  5. wwjessedo.blogspot says

    I hope this is true but they should switch to Ron Paul or Gingrich for a few months to even out the votes. We Paul supporters are taking care of getting the delegates needed for a brokered convention for after the first round of voting.

  6. Another issue here is that Gingrich is following a similar line that Reagan followed in his first GOP bid in 1976 against Ford. He lost that bid, but won handedly in the 1980 bid. If Gingrich loses this one, he’ll be in good standing for 2016 if the GOP nominee loses to Obama. By that time he will have solidified himself as the clear GOP choice, as whichever moderate wins this time (most likely Romney) will lose decisively to Obama. Historically moderate Repubs don’t win. The only thing Gingrich has against him in this strategy is his age; but take a look at Ron Paul.

  7. What parent would be running for president when they have a baby w a life threatening disease who is not expected to live past the age of 3? I don’t care whether Democrats crossed over to support Santorum or not-he’s not remotely qualified to either go up against Obama or lead this country. What has he ever led besides his family? Has he ever created any jobs, reformed an entitlement program (and no, he had nothing to do w welfare reform in the 90’s), balanced a federal budget? Nope. Ever run a business? Nope. He is a horrible speaker. Women are voting for him because they think he’s a good husband and family man. Others are voting for him because he’s a religious zealot. Please….no wonder our country is screwed up.

    • Simple – one who has an ego bigger than the foot he can’t seem to keep out of his mouth. One who seems to think he can condemn others for doing what he considers to be wrong. One who parrots putting family first when he is actually turning his back on his wife and child.

  8. Man I wish I could “like” a few of these comments. They are very accurate. I did see a few young white males voting for Santorum in my Alabama precinct but I think it was legit. Thank you Ron Paulers for helping us get that broker convention. I think the majority of Santorum votes in Alabama came because they thought they had no choice to defeat Romney. They fell for the media coverage and what Romney, Obama, and Santorum told them. They didn’t understand the facts of hard delegates versus the soft and no matter how you tried to explain it, all they saw was the numbers on tv and percentages. Maybe the Breitbart replacements will cover Illinois.

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