If former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012, Montana and its surrounding states would be key to her securing the Republican nomination. That’s according to Nate Silver, who runs the political blog fivethirtyeight.com and spends much of his free time crunching numbers. The red states on the adjacent graph show where Silver thinks Palin would run strong based on fundraising, exit polls and the percentage of rural areas in each (read a list of all the variables here).
From that formula, Silver ranks which states are most likely to vote for Palin in the Republican primary. Montana ranks fifth on the list and both Wyoming and North Dakota crack the top five. Those three states are part of the “second wave” of the Republican primaries and caucuses that follow the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Neveda.
In all three scenarios in which Silver has Palin winning the nomination, he has her potentially “cleaning up” in the Mountain West and other rural states in that second wave of voting.
The one caveat is that smaller states tend to place more emphasis on infrastructure and organization, which may not be Palin’s strength (that’s why Mitt Romney, who excels in that department, tended to do well in these states in 2008). But demographically speaking, they should be very fruitful territory for her.
Silver also predicts the path to Republican victory for both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. It’s fascinating stuff. Read his entire analysis here.