Nevada Caucus 2012: Five Things to Look for Tonight

Nevada Republicans will hold their caucuses on Saturday, giving us the fifth result -- yes, believe it or not, only four states have voted so far -- of the 2012 presidential campaign. At stake are 28 delegates and, as always, the elusive "momentum" card.

When it comes to predicting the results, there are only two recent polls to go by. The first, conducted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal from Jan. 27-31, found 45 percent support for Mitt Romney, 25 percent for Newt Gingrich, 11 percent for Rick Santorum and 9 percent for Ron Paul. The second, conducted by Public Policy Polling from Feb. 1-2, put Romney at 50 percent, Gingrich at 25 percent, Paul at 15 percent and Santorum at 8 percent.

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That Romney will win seems beyond dispute, or as beyond dispute as anything can be in a race that has had more front-runners than Henry XVIII had wives. The real questions are about runners-up and margins: Will Romney reach the coveted 50 percent threshold? Will Paul surpass Gingrich for second place? Will Santorum do anything worth noting?

Here are five things to keep in mind as you follow the caucuses tonight.

Romney Shooting for 50

With a lead of 20 percent or even greater over Gingrich, Romney doesn't really have to worry about winning the caucuses. It will be his margin of victory that will determine whether he can point to Nevada as the state where he began to dispel the lingering doubts about his electability.

The consensus seems to be that the magic number is 50 percent. That's about what he got in Nevada in 2008, and if he can do it again this time around, with a much more contested field, he will be better equipped to argue that Republicans are coalescing around him.

"Anything under 45, 50 percent would be a disappointment, I think," said Ted Jelen, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "He's not going to get much credit [for winning Nevada] -- all Romney can really achieve is to hold serve, unless it's just an overwhelming blowout, which is not going to happen. He has more to lose than to gain here."

In today's vote, said David Damore, also a political scientist at UNLV, Romney "is battling more against expectations than anything else."

Paul Outperforming Polls

In theory, Nevada's closed caucuses should put Paul at a disadvantage in comparison to the open contests held in Iowa and New Hampshire, because much of his support comes from independent voters and Democrats. But Paul makes up for that disadvantage with superb grassroots organization and, above all, the commitment of his supporters -- two things that are extremely important in caucuses.

"For the caucus, you have to show up day, time and place certain. You have to stay for a couple of hours," said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno. "The Paul folks are more than willing to make that commitment."

Not only are they willing and eager to give their time to the caucus process, but the Paul campaign knows exactly what it needs to do to turn them out. "What you need in a caucus is organizers, leaders to tell people where to go," Jelen said. "Where do you show up, what's the address, what time do you have to show up? It's not just showing up after work or after breakfast or before dinner. It's 11:30 sharp, and not everybody knows that. You need to make sure that your supporters have their little maps, have their instructions." And Paul's supporters do.

With these factors in mind, Herzik and Damore both predicted that Paul could go as high as the 20 percent range and finish second. They and Jelen all agreed that the race between Gingrich and Paul should be much more competitive than the polls indicate.

Gingrich Struggling for Second

Nevada is probably more important for Gingrich than for any other candidate, because after his stinging loss in Florida, he needs to prove that he is still the most viable anti-Romney candidate. But he is also arguably the least equipped to do well here.

The polls show Gingrich in second place, with a seemingly comfortable lead over Paul and Santorum, so second place will be the expectation. But it is very possible, even probable, that Paul will overtake him, and that would be a big embarrassment for a candidate who, just two weeks ago, was boasting about his huge upset victory in South Carolina. And if Santorum performs even somewhat better than his poll numbers indicate, "that will come predominantly at Gingrich's expense," said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston.

"I think Gingrich will underperform his polls," Jelen said. His organization in the state is weak, and that lessens his ability to turn out supporters who might not know, for example, that the caucus has a strict start time. Doing well in Nevada depends in large part on having a team on the ground to direct voters. "Paul has those things," Jelen said, "and Gingrich, to a remarkable extent, does not."

Santorum Facing Reality

The PPP poll showed Santorum in last place in Nevada by a 7-point margin, and with no organization to speak of -- he didn't even have an office in the state until a few days ago -- it would take something of a miracle for him to turn out enough voters to finish respectably.

"He may pick up a bit of support from very conservative social issue voters who can't back Romney and have tired of Gingrich," Herzik said, but "Santorum has marginal organization in the state and, even with the support of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, I doubt he will be much of a factor."

Angle, the Tea Party leader who ran against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010, made a last-minute endorsement of Santorum on Thursday, but that doesn't mean as much as it once might have. "Nevada isn't a great match for [Santorum], as we are far more economic conservative voters than social-issue conservative voters," Herzik said. "And Angle's standing in the Republican Party has faded considerably since her disastrous campaign against Harry Reid."

Jelen put it more bluntly. "I think he's toast," he said -- and later, "Santorum is the most likely big loser."

Forget the Polls

Those polls I mentioned earlier? You should probably forget them.

The polls almost certainly underestimate Paul's numbers, for one -- the question is really the size of the underestimation. "His group of supporters is not going to get picked up the way the polling is done here," Damore said. Many polls only include land lines, and so the young voters who account for a large part of Paul's support "aren't going to be picked up in the numbers that they exist out there."

More fundamentally, while it is not impossible to predict caucus results from pre-election polls, there is always a high degree of uncertainty -- much higher than there is with primary polls. That is largely because the caucus model, as opposed to the primary model, can involve hours of discussion before participants actually cast their votes. Voters give speeches on behalf of their preferred candidates, and if they manage to convince others, the final tally could be very different from what the polls predicted -- even if the polls were spot-on at the time they were conducted.

"You could poll accurately what that snapshot in time is, based on people who are intending to go vote in the caucus, but it's like input-output," Paleologos said. "You're recording people's sentiment on the input side before they go into that box called the caucus, and then on the output side, the results could be very different. What happens in a caucus -- the sort of making of a political sausage, if you will -- is vastly different than in a primary."

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