KEITH OLBERMANN: More, now, on the extraordinary numbers coming out of the GOP primary. I'm joined by Mr. Extraordinary Numbers himself, Nate Silver. Mr. "FiveThirtyEight" himself and writes under that title blog for The New York Times. Good to see you, Nate.
NATE SILVER: Yeah, thank you, Keith.
OLBERMANN: The three national polls basically show — if you add them together and divide by three — a tie between Romney and Santorum, who was seen as, perhaps, a sort of conservative — ultra-conservative stalking horse, something else. How did we get to where they're tied and is it a passing fancy?
SILVER: Well, every time there's been a shift in momentum — whether toward Romney or away from him — you've seen some reversal a few days later. My view, though, is that Santorum has more going for him than Newt, for instance, in terms of "what you see is what you get." He wears his politics on his sleeve.
OLBERMANN: On his sweater vest.
SILVER: Sweater vest, yeah. Lets you take it or leave it. But, you know, Republicans are learning more about the candidates. He was the one that was less well-known beforehand. And also the fact that Romney — as more candidates are dropping out, and now Newt's maybe on his last legs — he's not really picking up any support. So the whole "anybody but Romney" theory that looked like it was foolish after New Hampshire seems to have made a comeback.
OLBERMANN: So, every other Republican challenger to the Romney supposed "inevitability" issue has lost ground when exposed to the light.
SILVER: Sure.
OLBERMANN: You're suggesting that Santorum has gained ground when exposed to the "monkey's butt" spotlight?
SILVER: Well, there's an issue — no matter what theory you've had about this primary, you're kind of banging your head against the wall and you're proven right every week and wrong the next week, potentially.
I think, partly because it is a later stage of the race, and partly because you're seeing — it's one thing to have the polls tied among registered voters, which is usually what they will show. But among likely voters, the enthusiasm gap — Romney might be at a deficit by six or seven points right now in the average state. It could change next week, but not having the enthusiasm, not having the turnout operation that Obama or Hillary did in '08, is a minus for him.
OLBERMANN: And speaking of the polls, even if these are just temporary blips for him on the way to the nomination, this swing in independent voters has got to be — is it epic, historically? Because as I said, we were — a month ago we were plus-10 Romney over Obama and now we're plus-nine Obama over Romney. Nineteen-point swing in a month is extraordinary, isn't it?
SILVER: Remember, there are two things pushing on this. And one of them is the economy, where you have 225,000 jobs being created, that probably accounts for half of it. But there's no doubt that — when you're playing to win your base, and the Republican Party is very conservative right now — and Romney is not the most deft politician.
Obama in '08 was playing to his base and the center and did very well. It turned out, when he got in the White House, that he had made too many promises and that created some of his problems, but as a campaign strategy he had the skill to pull it off.
Romney, with, like, this Detroit op-ed, seems to get the worst of it, really, where you're not quite pandering the right way to the conservatives, and yet you're definitely alienating independent voters at the same time. I think they run a good campaign, but you can have a good campaign that has a bad candidate. Hillary was the opposite. She was a great candidate who had a bad campaign.
OLBERMANN: You figure with that Detroit news op-ed there were twelve people sitting there lighting their cigars with thousand dollar bills going, "I like this guy." But everybody else, perhaps — no, and that brings to the point you just raised about the base and the blog posting that you wrote today, "Down in Michigan polls, Romney needs to find his base." What is his base?
SILVER: Well, you know, you would say maybe it's kind of country-club Republicans.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
SILVER: Really, but it doesn't reach very far. One stat about Romney that is kind of shocking is that he's only raised $4 billion — $4 million, excuse me, in donations —
OLBERMANN: Someday we'll be saying "only $4 billion," sadly.
SILVER: From small donors, which is less than Hillary Clinton, Hillary — excuse me, Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich have raised, about the same as Michele Bachmann. So, in terms of reaching out and having a network in each state — we see the caucus states too, they were thought to be a strength of his but they haven't been, really. If you are getting only the most 5,000 enthusiastic people in your state, they are probably going to be Santorum or Ron Paul supporters and not Mitt Romney fans.
OLBERMANN: Is this why he seems not to have gone so negative in Michigan as he has elsewhere? Or is there some reason he shouldn't try to destroy Santorum now?
SILVER: Well, at some point, you look like you're just destroying any conservative rival, period. I mean, the campaign got pretty negative pretty fast. I think, in the long run, Romney doesn’t just want to win but wants to win and unite most of his party behind him. If you get a win on the delegate count in the end, then that might cause you to pay some price if it's an ugly win.
So, I think this is his last chance to win the race cleanly, by winning Michigan and Arizona, by carrying most states on Super Tuesday, then he's still on a nomination trajectory.
But the downside's very big and the downside is worse. If you deploy all your ammunition on Santorum in Michigan, your home state, and it doesn't work — then, I think — you would be the underdog, them, to win it at that point. If you were to lose Michigan in a negative way, right? Where if you run the honorable campaign, maybe it's — "Oh, he's trying to do things the right way and he's had a tough time, but he won Arizona, and he can win Ohio," right?
So, I think you make yourself more sympathetic if you're trying to tell your story and you're telling cheesy anecdotes about going to Tiger Stadium and so forth. I mean, that's — you know, Romney has needed to do more of that throughout this campaign and it's probably the step in the right direction for him.
OLBERMANN: Just to remind him to say "al-kay-line," not "al-ka-line." Thanks for telling that story.
Nate Silver, Mr. "FiveThirtyEight" of The New York Times. Always a pleasure to see you, sir.
SILVER: Thank you, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Good to see you.
