By Stan Escudero Come Saturday, South Carolina’s voters will choose their state’s preferred Republican presidential candidate. The primary is open so any of the state’s voters can participate with delegates awarded on a proportional basis.
Right now Mitt Romney is ahead in the polls with about 40% support with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum following. Perry has less than 6% and Jon Huntsman, who had 5.6%, just bailed out this morning while endorsing Romney. (I doubt that this will give Romney a 5.6 point bounce in the polls though.)
With five days still to go before the vote, there is plenty of time for these rankings to shift and South Carolina is famous for its convoluted and sometimes bare-knuckle politics. But as the “first in the South” primary, it is also famous as a contest which winnows out the also-rans.
Huntsman’s departure is not surprising. He had focused all his artillery on New Hampshire where he did no better than third. In South Carolina, a very conservative state, the relatively liberal Huntsman was probably going to come in last, a standing which drives away donors and other supporters in droves.
Even his billionaire father would have been unlikely to pour much more money into that pit and, without funding and organization, Huntsman would have been unable to compete seriously in critically important Florida on Jan. 31.
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