Nate Silver model now shows Gingrich as the overwhelming favorite in South Carolina. Silver cautions:
[T]hose looking for hopeful signs for Mr. Romney can find a couple. First, Mr. Gingrich somewhat underperformed his polling in both Iowa and New Hampshire, perhaps as a result of his middling voter-turnout operation. Second, the race appears to be much tighter — essentially a tossup — if you look solely at polls conducted using live interviewers, rather than those like Public Policy Polling that use automated scripts.
Final forecast from Silver here. Blumenthal says, with all the news in the past few days, to "expect the unexpected":
[W]hile the recent surge in support for Gingrich is undeniable, the events of the last 24 hours have the potential to produce new and unexpected changes in voter preferences. There is some precedent for such shifts, including the events just prior to New Hampshire's 2008 Democratic presidential primary and a special congressional election in 2009 in New York's 23rd Congressional District.
Scott Clement looks at where Gingrich is polling strongly:
Men have driven Gingrich’s late surge in pre-election polls, but his numbers haven’t improved much among women. Gingrich won 28 percent support among men in a CNN/Time/ORC poll released Wednesday, compared with 16 percent among women. It’s not clear how much impact, if any, the latest brouhaha over Gingrich’s problems with his ex-wife will have on voters Saturday, or which candidate stands to benefit. Regardless, South Carolina may mark the first contest with a significant – and potentially decisive – gender divide.
And, like PPP, YouGov's final poll has Gingrich ahead. An interesting detail:
South Carolina Republicans are almost equally divided on which is more important-a candidate's ability to defeat Obama or his positions on the issues. Not surprisingly, Romney leads Gingrich by 41% to 35% among those who care most about electability, but loses by a 30% to 17% margin among those who say "a candidate's position on the issues is most important."
The Dish 