Ron Paul Roundup: Ahead to Maine, Back to Nevada, and vs. Obama (in T-Shirt Sales)

Maine has been caucusing for a week now and will announce the results tomorrow. Turnout tends to be very, very low, and Paul was third there in 2008 with 18 percent, one of his best states when it was still a three-way race then.

The Washington Post speculates on yet another defeat for frontrunner Romney:

Neither former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) nor former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has made a play for Maine, meaning that Saturday's contest will essentially be a battle between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman whose enthusiastic supporters have made caucus states a focus of their efforts.

In an interview Thursday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Paul – who has not held a campaign-trail event since Tuesday night – said that he believes he has a shot at winning in Maine.

"Are you going to win the Maine caucuses Saturday?" Blitzer asked.

"I think we have a chance to do that," Paul responded. "And I'll be up there and struggling up to the last minute. But every time I've been up there so far, it has been wonderful. And I'm so pleased that they're very receptive to the ideas of liberty, and I'm cautiously optimistic about Saturday."….

In 2008, only about 5,500 voters participated in the Maine GOP caucuses -- a turnout of just over 2 percent of the state's roughly 253,000 registered Republicans.

Paul held six town hall meetings in the state over two days at the end of January. Meanwhile, Romney's town hall in Portland Friday night will be his first visit to the state this cycle, although he held a tele-town hall and has sent surrogates – including his son, Tagg – to campaign on his behalf….

With 17 days between tomorrow's caucuses and the next nominating contests in Arizona and Michigan, the caucus results in the Pine Tree State could resonate on the campaign trail well past Saturday night — particularly if Paul ekes out his first-ever win in a nominating contest.

*A Nevadan writes about his caucus experiences with a positive spin, though he believes the campaign overemphasizes phone calling far too much over door-to-door interaction with voters. (I have heard the same from other locals in both Iowa and New Hampshire, that the weeks of advanced phone work aren't as optimal as the Paul campaign's strategy and tactics seem to believe.) 

*Good magazine reports on the phenomenon of former Obama folk turning in their grief to Ron Paul. Meantime, Cafe Press notes that for the first time, in the wake of his highly publicized State of the Union address, that Obama merch is now outselling Ron Paul's. In a press release received via email from MBooth communications that I was not able to find online, they note:

CafePress, an e-commerce platform that powers user-designed merchandise, has been tracking 2012 election presidential candidate support via the 2012 Meter graph. With an average of over 137,000 new designs uploaded every week, it's no surprise many of them are political in nature…. The Meter graphs track merchandise sales trends for each presidential candidate and, through such trends, successfully predicted Barack Obama's victory in 2008……

Since The Meter poll launched in November, Ron Paul has held the top spot in product sales (e.g., t-shirts, etc.) each week in a commanding fashion—a testament to his loyal supporters, as they've been able to counter surges from the rest of the Republican field, as well as the incumbent, President Barack Obama…

However, since Obama's SOTU speech, Paul has fallen to 2nd place for the first time ever, demonstrating a sudden and significant surge in Obama support. Last week, Obama edged out Paul 46% to 33% and now, this week, we see that Paul is still runner-up. His numbers rose slightly, from 33% to 36%, but so did Obama's—from 46% to 47%…

In total, Paul still dominates Obama 57 to 27 in the Cafepress T-Shirt metric.

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