Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney Get Desperate in Michigan Primary

Impact

Mitt Romney in Michigan is not doing as well as Mitt Romney in Arizona. In the Grand Canyon state, Mitt Romney leads Rick Santorum by a margin of 16 percentage points, 43 to 27.

What this means is that all the action is in Michigan. Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are both spending their time campaigning there, with an aggressive schedule of appearances throughout the day. Both of the men 

The latest polls don't have much insight to offer, as all the latest polls have the race being extremely close with some polls reporting Romney with a lead and some reporting that Santorum has a slight edge.

Best guessing about who will win is further hampered by the way that Michigan divides its delegates. There are 2 delegates awarded for each congressional district that a candidate carries, meaning that polls that are state-wide might not take into account the different levels of support in each district, which is where the delegates will be awarded from. Currently though, it seems that districts are roughly divided as well with Romney doing well in the areas around Detroit and Santorum doing better in the less urban surrounding districts. It's possible that a close race would mean that both Santorum and Romney are each awarded 15 of Michigan's delegates. 

The signs of desperation in the contest are mounting. The news for today is that Santorum is robocalling registered Democrats and reminding them that they can vote in the primary. The hope, apparently, is that they will vote for him and help him eke out a victory against Romney. 

This seems very risky given that most Democrats are probably very opposed to Santorum's basic political philosophy, not to mention that Romney has used the incident to fire up Republicans. He told reporters from his Livonia campaign HQ that "There's a real effort to kidnap our primary process, and if we want Republicans to nominate the Republican who takes on Barack Obama, I need Republicans to get out and vote and say no to the dirty tricks of a desperate campaign." 

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore