Cain Wins Again in SC, Gingrich Surges Fourth

All anyone is talking about this week is the new surge by Newt Gingrich. But looking at the support numbers after the debate in South Carolina last night, Newt is definitely surging but still hasn't gotten out of fourth place in adding new support on Facebook, sixth place overall.

Candidate	Thu 11/10 Noon	Sun 11/13 Noon	Pickup
Herman Cain	362,749	371,583	8,834
Mitt Romney	1,171,532	1,176,626	5,094
Ron Paul	578,427	583,074	4,647
Newt Gingrich	163,762	168,048	4,286
Rick Perry	170,178	170,943	765
Jon Huntsman	22,418	22,897	479
Gary Johnson	142,816	143,063	247
Rick Santorum	31,819	31,958	139
Michele Bachmann	459,167	459,154	-13

You don't need to take the Newt Gingrich surge too seriously until he's added the almost 140,000 supporters he needs to cross the Biden Line. At his current pace, that won't happen until February 19, 2012. That's if he can maintain his current pace of adding supporters, he really needs to double it.

Herman Cain continues to run the table, with his fourth win in a row. Foreign policy is supposed to be his weak suit, but apparently he has been studying up.

The big loser at the South Carolina debate was CBS. They televised the first 60 minutes of the 90 minute debate, then preempted the last 30 minutes for its regularly scheduled show NCIS. The abrupt cutoff of live TV coverage sent the political junkies to the cbsnew.com website for the live stream, but at least for me it streamed with such fits and starts as to be unwatchable.

"And that's the way it is?" Walter Cronkite might ask.