Real Clear Politics is a great website. RCP sorts through a vast amount of polling to create a big picture that I feel accurately depicts trends in public opinion.

But the other day I read on of the most misinformed articles I have ever seen on their website. The article written by Tom Bevan titled “Mitt’s Up and Down” discussed the differences between how Romney is polling in New Hampshire and Iowa verses how he is currently polling in South Carolina.

Bevan cites a Lee Bandy article in which the legendary S.C. political journalist attempts to dissect the reason why Romney is currently running third or forth in the field here in South Carolina. Bevan then writes:

Romney’s camp insists their candidate’s poor showing in South Carolina is due to the fact that people don’t know him yet, which may be true to a certain degree but doesn’t explain away the disparity with his rise in the other early primary states.

What Bevan left out (intentionally or unintentionally) was a key point included in the Bandy article:

“We’re not on TV here,” said Terry Sullivan, S.C. campaign director for Romney.

“We will be quite visible,” he promised. “Everything will start to fall in place”

“There is such a thing as getting out there too fast, too soon. I’d rather hand back for awhile. The only people paying attention are the activist.”

Television ads play an incredible role in swaying public opinion, especially when Romney is the only Republican candidate currently airing ads on TV. Romney has had limited television exposure in S.C., but hasn’t had any ads on the major broadcast networks since February. While the Romney Campaign has made some media buys in S.C., they have been limited to cable networks and do not have nearly the same number of rating points that the Iowa and New Hampshire buys have, which are mainly on broadcast networks.

Bevan (and Bandy to an extent) failed to mention this key factor in his article, and instead Bevan claims that the only possible explanation is that the voters in S.C. do not trust a Mormon running for President. Bevan does not cite any statistical evidence to prove this, and he does not cite any circumstantial evidence to back up his claim other than an incident in New Hampshire (remember this article is about South Carolina not NH).

Is Mormonism the thing holding Romney back?

Terry Sullivan said in the Bandy article, “The only people paying attention are the activist”, and Romney is doing remarkably well with the activists. Straw poll results taking during county convention prove this. Out of 1,889 votes taking during all of the county conventions Romney lead the field taking 618 total votes (33%). The next closest competitor John McCain only had 239 total votes (13%). Romney also picked up a key straw poll victory in the evangelical strong hold of Greenville County. If the Mormon issue is going to resonate anywhere in S.C. it will be with the activists, but these straw poll results indicate that many activists are embracing Romney with open arms.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Key influential leaders like Dr. Stephen Jones, President of Bob Jones University, have said that he is strongly considering throwing his support to Romney. Any Bob Jones-er worth his Bible will tell you that BJU doesn’t even allow other Christian networks like CBN to broadcast on the university cable system because they believe that the ideology supported by CBN doesn’t adhere to their beliefs. This clearly illustrates that evangelicals are willing to look past the religious beliefs of a candidate if they believe that person will advocate their policy beliefs.             
 
RCP is entitled to view the Mormon issue any way it wants to. But I want to see them cite clear scientific evidence such as polling that clearly demonstrates that Mormonism is the reason for Mitt Romney’s inability to climb in S.C. polls before they throw out that accusation because RCP is a website that is based on opinion polls. I do realize that one poll earlier this year did show that 43% of Americans would not vote for a Mormon, but in that same poll more people said they would not vote for somebody who was over 72 years old (McCain) or somebody who had been married more than twice (Giuliani).

Don’t get me wrong. I think that the Mormon issue certainly will affect some voters in S.C., but just because our we fly the Confederate Flag on State House grounds does not mean that we are all a bunch of bigots down here. I do not think Mormonism will affect Romney chances any more than McCain’s age and Giuliani’s past love life will affect their campaigns ability to win this key primary state.
 
Until proven otherwise I think we are all going to have to cite the lack of television ads in S.C. by the Romney Campaign as the reason he is not polling as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire.