OFFICIAL NH RESULTS: Santorum Edges Gingrich for 4th

01/30/2012 For a few weeks now we have posted results and updates here indicating that in the 2012 New Hampshire Republican Primary, Rick Santorum finished in fourth place ahead of Newt Gingrich in the January 10, 2012 primary. As new results have emerged, we have updated the numbers.

The official summary results, which are posted here by the New Hampshire Secretary of State, were technically unofficial until very recently, as minor corrections were still being received from several precincts in the state.

However, per a confirmation email we have received from the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Office, the results are now final.

Rick Santorum finished that first primary with 23,432 votes in fourth place, while Newt Gingrich received 23,421 votes to finish in fifth.

Updates from major news outlets, including the last one (January 11, 2012) on the interactive post by CBS News, and the latest (January 19th) post update from CNN, however, each continue to report erroneous numbers, suggesting that the result put Gingrich ahead of Santorum in that state's contest.

Their numbers are both wrong, as are the numbers still posted at MSNBC, and at Fox News as well. AP also has incorrect numbers posted, which come up as the source when "Googling" the "2012 New Hampshire Republican primary results."

The victor in the "first in the nation" primary, of course, was Mitt Romney, who officially received 97,591, followed by Ron Paul with 56,872, and Jon Huntsman who got 41,964 votes.

This is the second instance this year of official results changing the order of outcome in a statewide contest. And each time, former US Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has been the beneficiary of those ultimate corrections in the vote counts.

The result of recounted numbers from the Iowa caucuses showed that the official numbers would actually never be known because results from about eight precincts were lost or untabulated.

But Santorum has since been officially declared the victor in the contest in a squeaker, based on the available numbers -- by 34 votes. That Iowa change garnered national attention, and was widely reported in the last few days of the run-up to the South Carolina primary.

The change in the New Hampshire results, however, has received little or no attention, and, as noted, continues to be misreported by major news outlets.

The official percentage results were 9.430% for Santorum and 9.426% for Gingrich. Romney garnered 39.28% of the vote, Paul received 22.89% and Huntsman received 16.89% of the vote.

The remaining vote was split amongst several contestants, including Rich Perry (1,764), Buddy Roemer (950) and Michelle Bachmann (350), with each of the several candidates receiving less than 1% of the vote apiece.

Gingrich Lost To Santorum In NH: CNN/CBS Wrong

UPDATE: -1/27/2012 Rick Santorum is still a few votes ahead of Newt Gingrich as of January 27, 2012. Newly corrected totals from local precincts reporting numbers to the NH Sec'y of State's Office have resulted in a photo finish with Santorum now up by 11 votes in the official tallies, with Santorum having obtained 23,432 votes, to 23,421 for Gingrich [end update].
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Should you happen to be browsing through the placement numbers reported by the Sec'y of State of New Hampshire, you might well notice the final vote totals garnered by Rick Santorum (23,408) (23,432) and Newt Gingrich (23,293) (23,421).

Surprise!

In other words, Rick Santorum finished in fourth place, and Newt Gingrich finished behind him in fifth.

If you are surprised, you are likely not alone.

Because unless you looked at those actual results, you might well have been misled into believing the opposite -- such as has been reported consistently several major news-gathering organizations.

Let's take two of them, just as current examples -- CNN and CBS.

On election night, the two networks posted interactive "election returns" sites, and became widely relied upon sources of information on the election returns by the public at large. As the results trickled in from the 301 precincts around the Granite State, each of them posted updates, and they "automatically" updated the result tables. You didn't even have to refresh either url on most computers. It was done for you, as the returns came in and were posted. It really couldn't have been easier!

And yet, each of those major organizations ended up making the same exact mistake, and they have each failed to correct their error, fully four days later.

Interactive results that were reported by CNN and that are still linked there, and similar interactive results linked to and reported by CBS, both got the results and the order of finish wrong, and in the precisely the same way.

UPDATE: 01/27/2012 -- Between the two networks, only CNN updated once -- back on January 19th [Updated 9:31 a.m. EST, Jan 19, 2012] when Gingrich was slightly back on top on the partially corrected tally by a few votes. But the latest numbers from the New Hampshire Sec'y of State's Office, as of 01/27/2012, verified at 3:10 pm, clearly show Santorum defeating Gingrich by 11 votes, with Rick Santorum having received 23,432 votes, and Newt Gingrich having received 23,421 votes. [end update]

Both of those web-links set up to report the results remained live and active all throughout the next day, and as the "latest" numbers trickled in from the slower-reporting precincts, those latest numbers were posted at both of those sites. They were virtually identical, and they were both wrong.

In the "final" figures, which both CNN and CBS completed midday to early evening on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, when the last of the 301 precincts finally reported, they both had posted identical numerical and percentage results about the first several positions in the Republican Primary, each showing that Newt Gingrich, who they erroneously reported had received 23,411 votes, had beaten out Rick Santorum, who they erroneously reported had received the lesser total of 23,362 votes. The CNN site records this -- "Updated 1:59 p.m. EST, Jan 11, 2012" as their final correction. The CBS site records this -- "Last Updated at 5:05 PM ET" -- which was also posted on January 11, 2012 -- as their final update. UPDATE: 01/27/2012 -- Between the two networks, only CNN updated once -- back on January 19th when Gingrich was back up by a few votes. But the latest numbers from the Sec'y of State's Office clearly show Santorum defeating Gingrich by 11 votes. [end update]

Now, sometimes people and networks make mistakes. We posted placement results here in partial reliance on the belief that one of those two might have gotten incorrect numbers, but not both. We were wrong. We also had cautioned in our post that final results from the Sec'y of State would very likely alter the results. Therefore, we also posted a correction yesterday when we obtained better information.

The really egregious part of this is that it is now early evening on Saturday, January 14, 2012, and these two major newsgathering organizations each still have those erroneous numbers posted. I just checked, at 5:10 pm. Anyone going to either or both sites to gather reliable information, would be fooled into believing their bad numbers.

Are we to believe that the accurate order of finish is news that the networks simply do not believe is worth reporting, or even updating?

So what if Rick Santorum beat out Newt Gingrich for 4th place in New Hampshire, someone might ask? Would they ask the same question if the difference was between first and second place? Of course not!

But why does placement in fourth or fifth place matter?

Well, one reason is because both the results of early caucuses and primaries do get factored into the manner in which people evaluate the candidates further down the road. The earlier results are not dispositive in most peoples' minds, but they are certainly factors that can and I think should be taken into consideration, at least by informed voters.

Errors can also become the basis for faulty analysis by writers and other pundits, and, from the perspective of self interest on the part of the media outlet, an error might be compounded in a way that could inadvertently skew their reading of the process to their embarrassment.

For example, two out of the five "lessons" from the New Hampshire primary that CNN election analysts Paul Steinhauser and John Helton say voters should draw from their misreported results, related directly to that CNN placement error. Maybe they should rewrite the piece and call it "Five *THREE* things we learned from the New Hampshire primary" . . . "Uhh, Okay, so maybe FOUR things . . . the last one being, do not rely on your own network as a valid source of election results from which to draw lessons!"

Those are just a few of the reasons major newsgathering organizations should not misrepresent election results. And when they do, they should quickly correct those errors.

So there you have it . . . Newt Gingrich actually came in 5th place in New Hampshire, not in 4th as has been widely reported. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, and it certainly doesn't seem to matter a bit to either CNN or CBS.

But I'll bet it matters to Rick Santorum's supporters!

And, I'll bet it might even matter to at least some of the Newt Gingrich supporters, if they had known the truth about how the people of New Hampshire really took to his campaigning tactics in the aftermath of his big defeat in the Iowa caucuses.

Finally, it might even matter to the folks down in South Carolina, who some polls suggest may be flirting with a Gingrich mini-revival, the way the people of Iowa did for a short period of time back in December, before putting it all in perspective.

Who knows, maybe those two networks are each not inclined to make the correction on purpose!

Why?

I can think of a few possibilities, but here's one.

Maybe they like the way Newt is trying to wreak revenge on front-runner Mitt Romney with anti-capitalist rhetoric that plays right into Obama's hands, and they don't want to print anything that would suggest that the Republican Primary voters in New Hampshire had rejected Gingrich's sustained attacks.

2012 NH Republican Primary: All Precincts Now In

01/11/2012 Both CNN and CBS are showing complete numbers from the results of the 2012 New Hampshire Republican Primary, all 301 election precincts statewide having now reported.

UPDATE, 01/13/2012: The New Hampshire Sec'y of State has now posted new vote totals, prompting the need for us to include a few minor numerical and percentage adjustments here for most of the major candidates. As a result Newt Gingrich dropped to 5th place. The new totals also included results for those who were not on our major candidate list, including minor candidates, writes-in votes, "scattered" votes, and others. The overall result is minor numerical AND percentage adjustments from what we had previously written.

But the one big surprise was that with the recalculation of both the numerical and percentage adjustments, Newt Gingrich slipped down a notch to 5th place, below Rick Santorum.

The overall result is that Mitt Romney won with 97,532 97,600 votes, or 39.77% 39.3% of the total vote. In 2008, Romney got 75,675 votes. Thus, he increased his personal vote total this year, garnering 21,857 21,925 more votes in 2012 than he did four years ago.

Of the votes shown at CBS (which includes the votes for all the candidates (including the 349 votes cast for Michelle Bachmann) a total of 245,213 people cast ballots for the seven primary candidates on the ballot. (UPDATE: Because of the new Sec'y of State numbers, the CBS and CNN numbers previously linked are now slightly incorrect. See the table below for the accurate numbers.)

There were no doubt a small handful of votes cast for others, including write-ins, but we will not know with absolute precision how many there were until the Sec'y of State posts the official results in a few days. However, given the "final" numbers we do have now, it is clear that 4,174 more people voted in this year's Republican primary, than cast ballots back in 2008. UPDATE, 01/13/2012: In addition to the votes listed below (which now includes a posting of Buddy Roemer's 950 votes), and, in addition, after also counting all the votes for Herman Cain (161), Karger (485), Johnson (181), write-ins for Obama (285), and a host of other lesser votes, and those listed as "scatter," it is clear there was a significant increase in the number of votes cast in the Republican primarythis year. The overall total of 248,289 votes cast in this 2012 Republican primary in New Hampshire, exceeded the 2008 total of 241,039 by 7,250 votes.

The statewide totals were as follows: (See new totals under UPDATE: below). Taking into account the"final" numbers showing that 248,289 people voted in the NH Republican Primary this year, here were the individual results, numerical and percentage.

Mitt Romney _____ 97,532 _ 39.77% ★

Ron Paul ________ 56,848 _ 23.18%

Jon Huntsman ____ 41,945 _ 17.10%

Newt Gingrich ____ 23,411 __ 9.54%

Rick Santorum ____ 23,362 __ 9.53%

Rick Perry ________ 1,766 ___ .72%

Michelle Bachmann __ 349 ___ .14%

UPDATE, 11/13/2012: Latest numbers from the New Hampshire Sec'y of State's Office, can be found here, containing a few adjustments to several candidates' totals.

As we noted above, the bad news is for Newt Gingrich. Looks like he came in 5th place (not 4th as originally thought) -- behind Rick Santorum.

The adjusted statewide rankings were as follows -- with ALL 248,289 votes cast included:

Mitt Romney _____ 97,600 _ 39.3% ★

Ron Paul ________ 56,872 _ 22.9%

Jon Huntsman ____ 41,783 _ 16.82%

Rick Santorum ____ 23,408 __ 9.43%

Newt Gingrich ____ 23,293 __ 9.38%

Rick Perry ________ 1,764 ___ .71%

Buddy Roemer _______ 950 ___.38%

Michelle Bachmann ___ 350 ___ .14%

Other ____________ 2,269 ___ .91%

★ Designates the winner.

Romney Wins Big In New Hampshire; Paul Is 2nd

01/11/2012 Mitt Romney has scored a big win in the 2012 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary yesterday evening, with the race having been called for him within minutes of the polls closing at 8:00 pm.

With 5% of precincts reportedly still unaccounted for, 95,669 votes were cast for the former Massachusetts Governor, representing 40% of the total ballots cast and reported. Four years ago in 2008, Mitt Romney only got 75,675 votes in New Hampshire in his second place finish. This year, therefore, he enjoyed a considerable percentage and numerical increase in the number of voters who cast ballots for him.

Well over 20,000 more voters turned out for Mitt this time around. Exact figures will be available as the last few precincts are reported.

As of 2:41 am CNN had posted numbers showing that, with 95% of precincts having reported, Romney had 95,669 votes for 40% of the total. Ron Paul was in second place with 55,455 votes (23%), and Jon Huntsman was in third place with 40,903 votes (17%). Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were in a close scramble for 4th place, each with about 10% of the vote. Governor Rick Perry of Texas, was only drawing around 1% of the vote.

In 2008, Romney came in second behind Senator John McCain, having garnered (per the Sec'y of State on 01/11) 75,675 votes out of the total of 241,039 votes cast.

With 5% still unreported, and 239,708 votes already having been reported last night, that suggests that there is a possibility of an additional twelve thousand votes that will be added to the total.

So clearly, posted claims that it looked like he would come "in at 37-38%, with about the same total number of votes as in 2008" were and are inaccurate.

It also looks like the Newt Gingrich effort to attack Romney over his work at Bain, was being perceived by New Hampshire voters as an effort aimed at revenge, and at least so far, it has backfired. Newt finished well back in the pack.

A more recent attention-getting gimmick by the former Fannie Mae adviser will apparently feature him making an appearance at a homeownership rally down in South Carolina along with House Democrat Leadership big, Congressman James Clyburn.

That event will be held this coming Thursday.

Is AOL Playing 2012 Politics Already?

11/06/2010 -- Anyone who has any AOL account, is fully aware of the strong left-leaning character of the political coverage on their linked news stories . . . that is when they are not covering some insipid opinion or other, blurted out by some stupid hollywood celebrity! AOL "news" coverage can really be quite pathetic.

But is is possible that AOL is actively playing Democrat politics already -- just post mid-term elections? Just check the following photo montage AOL posted this morning on their face page, one that is intended to greet the millions of Americans having AOL as their e-mail service!

Bear in mind that CNN has just released a poll (ht: Ed Morrissey at HotAir) indicating that, as of today, two of the three most well known 2012 Republican hopefuls, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, would defeat Barack Obama. Only Sarah Palin would lose to Mr. Obama, according to the CNN poll. So, for the left and their acolytes in the media, perhaps it's become time to back off all the Sarah Palin bashing, and to begin unloading on both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney! By the way, AOL was well aware of the poll.

According to the CNN poll:

"Looking ahead to 2012, it may be too early to count Barack Obama out, particularly if Sarah Palin is his opponent," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The former Alaska governor gets a lot of attention, but she is in third place when Republicans are asked to pick a presidential nominee, and in a hypothetical matchup with Obama she is arguably the weakest candidate of the top-tier GOP hopefuls."

The poll itself addressed several others as well, including Newt Gingrich. According to CNN, Gingrich too would fare better than Sarah Palin against the President. But the photo montage just cited those "top three" Republican hopefuls. Here is the AP/Getty photo posted by AOL today.

Get the sense that the AOL photo editor would like to negatively affect any chance of either Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee growing in popularity and thereby being more likely to garner the nomination?

And, do you have any doubt something like that was a factor in the photos chosen to be posted together? I don't.

The Huckabee photo is terrible. It looks like he just had been told he failed an IQ test, for crying out loud! It takes real work to dig out a photo from the files that is that negative. Normally, this sort of selection represents the work of a partisan campaign consultant putting together a negative mailer meant to utterly ridicule the person or persons.

And Mitt Romney looks like he'd been holding his breath for several minutes, and just that second let the air out! Again, it took some real search time for the editor to come up with a photo that bad looking. Romney is normally a very photogenic person. It again looks like a selection made by a negative campaign consultant, not an ostensibly neutral media organization.

So, it sure looks to me like whoever did this editorial work, at this point wants Palin to get the nomination.

But it doesn't look to me like it was a Palin fan who made the choice. It is not the work of someone who wants her to actually be elected, mind you . . . just someone who wants her to win the Republican nomination.

The motive seems to have been trashing the two with, as of today, (according to the CNN poll) the best chance of beating Obama in 2012.

After all, Barack Obama's photo looks just fine. Presidential, even.

Why Mitt?

Many folks have endorsed Mitt Romney for President, and for a variety of reasons.

My reasons really can be reduced to a connection. Few agree 100% with the positions on issues of a candidate they support, so I am sure I'm no exception. But, having evaluated the views and the approach of the candidates, for some time now I have felt a solid connection to his approach. Mitt Romney's real world career successes, both in business and in the public sector, are far and away the most impressive of any of the candidates. And the manner in which he and his family have lived their lives is notable as well. But it was his approach, the way he talked about how he would govern, that won my support and my vote.

To me, the best Presidents have a few solid qualities, ones which can oddly seem somewhat contradictory on occasion. But the Presidency demands several qualities because a President fills several roles. And the best Presidents do so in a relatively seamless manner.

Constitutionally, a President is our nation's chief executive and the military Commander in Chief. A President is also the head of state. All three roles demand unique qualities, and for me Mitt Romney would best fill all three. In fact, his grounding in the business world is a particularly significant factor now in dealing with economic turbulence, including avoiding an over-reaction that would hamstring us on the back end.

Here in New Jersey, I am reminded that a few successive Democrat administrations have literally destroyed the economic viability of our State government -- not of our economy quite yet -- but certainly of our State Government. At the same time they have bloated the size of government all out of proportion. New Jersey has become a certifiably obese state Government. The current governor's "solution," however, is to mortgage the future with enormous toll road increases, which will simultaneously ruin whatever remains of our quality of life by driving traffic off onto local arteries. And he'll be long gone before the piper even begins to tune up!

In short, New Jersey has permanently adopted the J. Wellington Wimpy model of governance, "I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." So, I want a president who will not continually be knocking on Democrats' doors looking for ways to compromise and grow the government, all while enabling personal dependence and diminishing our individuality, just so he can prove he is an independent.

A president must have extraordinarily strong convictions to successfully pursue a political agenda, but those should be coupled with an inherent modesty of purpose, an understanding that in promoting and protecting and ultimately preserving our representative democratic polity and our free society, the framework for pursual of a political agenda is, and should be, limited indeed. He or she leads, but not without being fully connected, and not without understanding that at the end of the day, our core values of freedom and liberty not only remain intact, they should ideally be enhanced.

Just because of the nature of the game, many candidates this year seem to exude much of that first quality -- strong convictions -- but too little of the latter, that inherent modesty of purpose.

Anyone who truly values and cherishes freedom and liberty knows that they both inform our national soul, and can be mighty messy as well! Nothing good usually comes out of the kitchen without a sink full of pans and dishes!

Good leadership, therefore, ought to arise out of energetic engagement in public debate, and succeed only through persuasion. Good politics is the fight for the right tomorrow, employing the means that preserve our political inheritence. Finding ways to tamp down or cut off politically motivated speech and debate, therefore, is inherently wrong. McCain/Feingold was and is an abomination. And when I hear a politician opine -- as several leading Democrats have threatened since eeking out a bare majority in Congress nearly two years ago -- that talk radio may need to somehow be reigned in, that is it for them. Where was the classic liberal who stood up and said "no" to that rubbish?

I often suspect that progressives -- that's what they like to be called these days --really believe that free speech and expression are merely means to the imposition of their ends, and that once their ends are being achieved, those means can just "whither away." "Political correctness" is a demonstrable current precurser of that end game. Just think of the perfectly legitimate things you're no longer "allowed" to say, and the new euphemisms you are now expected to employ! Nuts to that!

Some "progressive leaders" even exhibit a tendency to equate, or should I say conflate their own power-seeking ambitions, with our national zeitgeist. Hillary Clinton is a prime example. It is, and always has been all about her. Well, I say, "go garnish your own wage, lady!" And she really ought to lay off the bogus tears, too!

Finally, I like the idea of a President who, like Mitt, proved he could win and govern in a blue state, in some ways, the bluest state of all -- at least then! And this year, I was impressed by his ability to go into what will undoubtedly be a battleground state of Michigan, and win as well.

Lest anyone point to current polls, however, to suggest that only McCain scores against Democrats, I'm not impressed. As at other times in the past, John McCain has gotten a free primary-length pass from the main stream media outlets, including being endorsed for the primary by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. But that honeymoon will not last for one single second, should he secure the Republican nomination. If he does win, the media-wide spigot will be abruptly turned off.

Then there will be a lot of cheerleading for Clinton or Obama. And, as in the past few cycles, there will be some significant breaking through that filter here on the internet. I predict, more and better.

So, HERE, as with some other notable locations elsewhere on the internet, I'm for Mitt Romney for President.

Now I think I'll go vote!