Tonight’s another very important night for the Republican presidential hopefuls, with primaries in Arizona and Michigan. Mitt Romney seems assured of a decent win in the former, where the latest two polls put him 16-17 points ahead of Rick Santorum. But Michigan is looking incredibly close — with the poll results of the last two days ranging from a four-point lead for Romney to a five-point lead for Santorum.
It could go either way: Nate Silver’s model gives Romney a 55 per cent chance of victory to Santorum’s 45 per cent chance. With the polls this narrow, it will all come down to who’s best at getting their voters out — and even that is tough to predict here. Romney has the better organisation on the ground, but Santorum’s voters seem, in general, to be more enthusiastic. It is worth remembering that Santorum beat the poll-based predictions in Iowa, South Carolina and — by a long way — in the three states that voted three weeks ago.
And there’s one group of voters who could put Santorum over the top: Democrats.
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