Us politics

They said South Carolina would be Mitt Romney’s big test. Tonight, he failed it. The networks have called the primary for Newt Gingrich, and CNN’s exit poll shows him beating Romney 38-29. It’s an astounding turnaround, considering that Romney led by around 10 points just a few days ago. The Romney campaign is already trying to claim it’s not too disappointed by the result – that a few weeks ago they would have been happy with third place, that it’s Florida that really matters. But the truth is, he’s suffered a big upset. After it looked like he’d won Iowa and he took a solid if unsurprising win in New Hampshire,

When the week began, the idea of anyone but Mitt Romney claiming victory in tonight’s South Carolina primary seemed fanciful. He had a 10 point lead in the polls, giving him a 90 per cent chance of victory according to Nate Silver’s model. Any talk of someone else winning sounded like the wild hopes of a media keen for the nomination battle to go on as long as possible. But no longer. As I said on Thursday, it’s been a particularly bad week for Romney and a particularly good one for Newt Gingrich. Gingrich even managed to turn the one thing that seemed likely to halt his momentum – an

Of course, Mitt Romney hasn’t secured the Republican nomination yet. But now that the bookies have him odds on at 1/9, it’s definitely worth thinking about how he’d shape up against Barack Obama. Does he have much of a chance? Well, yes, actually. The head-to-head polls so far point to a close fight between Obama and Romney. And Obama’s approval ratings and GDP growth forecasts — better predictors of the result at this stage — also point to a very tight election. It’s shaping up to be one of those elections where the key to victory is not the national popular vote, but the Electoral College. It’ll be winning each individual

Tonight’s New Hampshire primary is very unlikely to provide the sort of razor-thin margin we saw in Iowa last week. Mitt Romney looks assured of a comfortable win – Nate Silver’s poll-based model (above) gives him a 98 per cent chance of victory. If one of the others did somehow beat him, it’d be the biggest upset of any modern US primary. The only real questions are just how comfortable it’ll be (20 points? 30? or just 10?), and who will come second. The polls suggest the battle for runner-up will be between Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. Paul is the favourite to take it, but the momentum of the

Mitt Romney’s status as the overwhelming favourite to be the Republican nominee for president is confirmed by a new poll out of South Carolina. It has Romney on 37 per cent, 18 points ahead of his nearest rival Rick Santorum. South Carolina is the next primary contest after New Hampshire, which takes place on Tuesday and which Romney is expected to win comfortably.   The significance of these new numbers is that South Carolina, the first primary in the south, has long been considered inhospitable territory for Romney. (In the 2008 primary there, he finished a disappointing fourth with 15 percent of the vote). If Romney is to be denied

The year has begun with Iran and the United States circling each other in the Straits of Hormuz; like two boxers before a bout, seeing who will strike first and working out where a blow could land. The immediate cause has been Iranian manoeuvres in the Arabian Gulf, and a visit to the area by the American aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis. Iran’s army chief has said that his country will take action if a US aircraft carrier returns to the Gulf. Oil prices have shot up as a result. This could be the worst time to goad a Democratic president facing pressure from those Republicans currently trying ‘out