My back of the napkin calculations indicate that Newt Gingrich stands to increase his performance in South Carolina by less than two percentage points as a result of Rick Perry dropping out and endorsing him. Perry supporters prefer Gingrich to Romney by a 2:1 ratio, but he only had the support of 4% of South Carolina’s Republican voters. Even if all of Perry’s votes went to just Gingrich and Romney, Gingrich would only pick up an additional 1.4% of the vote. But, of course, some percentage will move to Santorum and Paul, and others may move to Colbert/Cain.
In other words, Perry’s move could be important if South Carolina turns out to be as close as Iowa, but he won’t confer too much of a boost to Gingrich.
Rick Perry’s campaign was so sad that I feel like it would be cruel to write a post-mortem about it. He was the worst candidate of his stature that I have ever seen. Even Sarah Palin was considerably better.