There are a lot of people online going nuts about Paul’s 8% result in New Hampshire yesterday. I have to admit I’m surprised by the results. RealClearPolitics.com has 6 polls’ numbers and their average. The averages look like this:

  • McCain: 31.8%
  • Romney: 28.2%
  • Huckabee: 12.2%
  • Giuliani: 9.3%
  • Paul: 8.2%
  • Thompson: 2.2%

What we got was:

  • McCain: 37.02%
  • Romney: 31.48%
  • Huckabee: 11.20%
  • Giuliani: 8.53%
  • Paul: 7.23%
  • Thompson: 1.21%
  • Hunter: 0.51%
  • Other: 2.40%

Huckabee, Giuliani, Paul and Thompson look pretty close to the polls which were of likely Republican voters. Is it really the case that the Independents flocked to McCain? I was expecting that Paul would have at least gotten enough Independents to keep his percentile. The events I’ve attended the independents, new voters and Democrats who switched outweighed those who where originally from the Republican party or Libertarian party. I would have suspected that he would have gotten at least 8% of the independents so he’d be at around 8% in the end. It is the Live Free or Die state… and Iowa which can hardly be considered libertarian gave him 10%. It’s the state that gave Pat Buchanan the win in 1996 and Buchanan has been speaking really well of Paul (though no official endorsement.) It all feels a bit weird but I’ve not seen any evidence of foul play. Sutton township accidentally reported zero votes for Paul when it was 31. Shit happens. http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php shows differences between votes counted by hand and votes handled by machines. It is interesting that Paul does a full 2% better in hand counted polls. McCain does 2.87% better and Huckabee 2.65% better. Romney does 7.51% worse. I’d like to see the economic breakdown of those areas which hand counted vs machine. But even with this I’m in no way convinced this means anything. I’ve yet to see anything to indicate foul play. I think it’s much more likely that we screwed up. “[A] late campaign start, late arrival by volunteers, an MSM media black-out, seeing your volunteers spending the last 36 hours of the campaign protesting FOX News and chasing down NeoCon radio hosts instead of focusing on the get-out-the-vote effort, the weather-induced record turnout that allowed the wishy-washy to water down die-hard voters, and so on and so on.” However, as Nick Bradley indicates, Among total votes cast Paul is in 4th at 8.6% above Giuliani at 7.0%. I don’t suspect to continue however given he’s only got max 5% nationwide and if he’s not getting delegates it doesn’t matter. So unless Paul supporters go mascaraed as supporters of McCain and Romney we are SOL.

My worry now is that Paul will decide not to run 3rd party or will not run on the Libertarian ticket. He has till May to become a Libertarian Party member in order to be a candidate. If he does not end up on the Libertarian ticket he would probably run Independent and therefore against the Libertarian and Constitutionalist candidates instead of uniting them. I think it would be in the best interest of the country, Ron Paul and the Libertarian party to have Paul on it’s ticket.

Anyway… here is Alex Jones going off about the info I’ve talked about:

In other but related news… rumor is Bill Richardson is going to drop out of the race soon.