Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Tracking Pawlenty for 2012

If only we had one of these for each of the prospective Republican presidential candidate in 2012.







Red states indicate personal travel
Green states indicate official (gubernatorial) travel


In our expectations post yesterday, I went on record (There is a record of it until I edit the line out.) saying that Tim Pawlenty is running for president. He's eschewed a third term as governor in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. He's taken on the position of vice chair in the Republican Governors Association and in that capacity has already been traveling the country (see above). He's started his own political action committee (Freedom First -- Side note: Why, oh, why did he not as someone suggested via Twitter yesterday call it T-PAC. The guy does go by TPaw.). All he needs now to make it official is an announcement and a book.

That said I wanted to take a quick glance at the map above and the 2012 primary calendar (neither of which are fully formed at this point) to see if we can glean any patterns. At first glance the answer seems to be maybe. Of all the states Pawlenty has visited since June 2009, all of them with the exception of Ohio held a delegate selection event in February or earlier (But which states didn't in 2008?). Of course, Arkansas has since moved back to May for 2012 and Michigan likely won't be as early in January the next time around either (Well, we'll see.). But those are mostly early primary and caucus states. Is that just a coincidence? Yeah, probably, but humor me for a second, will you.

As I said at the outset, I wish we had one of these for everyone of the prospective 2012 Republicans. It would be a nice addition to the candidate emergence tracker or the Twitter tracking.


Recent Posts:
FHQ Reading Room (9/23/09)

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (9/22/09)

Arizona in 2012? Still Red.

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