Doing The Math, the GOP Primaries so far

I keep seeing the GOP primaries and the percentages for each of the contestants and wonder if anyone else notes the real problem.

For instance, in Iowa Santorum won with 24.6%.  That means that 75.4% preferred someone else, and that was for the winner!  Three quarters of those involved didn't like Santorum and he was the winner.

Now, let's go on to the next one, that would be New Hampshire.  In N.H. Romney received 39.3% and won but that just means that 60.7% voted against him, and he was the winner.

How about South Carolina?  Gingrich won S.C. with 40.4% of the vote which means that 59.6 preferred someone else.

Let's stop here for a second and observe that there have been no repeats in the winners and the average winner only received 34.8% of the votes, which again means that 65.2% of the voters didn't like the winner . . . on average.

Now we will be seeing what happens to the numbers when the list shortens to just 4 contestants.

At the end of January, everyone went to Florida, which seems like a good place to go on January 31.  There we had a repeat, Romney.  He got 46.4% of the votes and 53.6% went for someone else and this was without the dilution of having 7 people in the race.

Next, we went to the Nevada caucuses on February 4.  There Romney won with the first ever 50.0% majority.

On Feb. 7, we had the three caucuses in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota. Rick Santorum won all three by 55.2%, 40.3% and 44.8% respectively.  That was the highest percentage(55.2%) so far and it was in Missouri where no delegates were at stake.

In Maine on February 11, Romney won again but by only 39.2%.  Again, lots of folks voted another way.

So far, on average, the winner of the various GOP primaries have won with only 42.2% on average.  That means the vast majority of participants voted for someone other than the winner.

What you have just seen is only a small part of the real story.  The number of actual voters is the big story.  Normally about 25% of the voters participating in the general election for President show up for the primaries/caucuses.  But this time only 17.7% showed up in Iowa and NO PREFERENCE beat out two of the participants.  In Maine, less than 2% of the normal number of voters from 2008 showed up to vote in the primaries.

I just don't see a lot of enthusiasm for any of the GOP roster.

Sources:
Associated Press via Google
http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/