Thanks to his spectacular surge last week, culminating in a big win in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, Newt Gingrich looked like he was back in contention for the Republican presidential nomination. Immediately, he took a commanding lead in Florida – which will host the next primary on Tuesday. And though Mitt Romney remained the clear favourite to go up against Barack Obama in November, Gingrich was still in the hunt.
But this week – just when he was looking strong – it’s all gone a bit wrong for Gingrich. $13 million worth of ads from the pro-Romney Super PAC ‘Restore Our Future’ have dwarfed the $3 million spent by pro-Gingrich ‘Winning Our Future’, and they seem to have taken their toll on the former Speaker. Often, the polls disagree and give a murky picture of the state of a race, but not in Florida. All of the seven polls conducted in the past three days show Romney leading Gingrich by 7 to 10 points.
Having lost the momentum he enjoyed last week to Romney, Gingrich needs to spark a new bounce if he’s going to claim victory on Tuesday. In the past, he’s used strong debate performances to breathe new life into his campaign – such as the one that sparked his South Carolina revival. But in the two Florida debates this week – the first on Monday, the second last night – he failed to catch fire, and there’ll be no more before voters go to the polls on Tuesday. Without his favourite medium, it’s hard to see how Gingrich can mount yet another comeback against Romney, who is being to look ‘inevitable’ once again.
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