ELECTION
PROCESS
2012
NATIONAL
Presidential Caucuses/Primaries
Republican National Primaries
Final Results
(forthcoming)
Archived Comments:
May 16: Ron Paul Drops Out
With Paul Out of the Race, Romney is the Republican Nominee. Enjoy!
Ron Paul has stopped campaigning, but that doesn't mean he's through. Paul supporters continue to battle for delegates and delegate positions in each of the states that aren't winner-take-all. Paul can't win the nomination, but he can influence the party platform and get a speaking gig in Tampa. Speculation is that suspending his campaign before the Kentucky primary on May 22 shelters his son Rand from any collateral damage. So, Republicans, the winner is Willard Mitt Romney! Excited yet?
D. Hardin May 16, 2012
May 8: The "Problem" is Ron Paul
With all but Paul Out of the Race, Paul can Cause Delegate Mischief
Romney will easily win all of the remaining primaries. The problem is that many primaries are really only straw polls or "beauty contests" that do not create a hard delegate count. The candidate who manages to get his supporters out to the district and state meetings is the one who either gets the actual delegates or at least the most delegates on the floor in Tampa who may or may not be pledged to Romney. This might make the GOP National Convention interesting, because nobody can say with certainty how many delegates each candidate actually controls. This has been the Paul strategy from the beginning, because his devoted followers will show up at the caucuses and meetings that determine delegates. Maine and Minnesota may have fallen to Paul after-the-fact one way or another, so the map to watch is the proportional pie chart map. Who loses in this? Santorum and Gingrich, which now is a moot point. Will Paul finagle enough delegates to stop Romney? Of course not, but he eventually could surpass Santorum's delegate count in this stealthy manner. It's all about leverage to influence the platform and to get a prime-time speaking spot at the convention.
D. Hardin May 3, 2012
May 3: And Then There's Just Ron Paul
Santorum Quits on April 10, Followed by Gingrich on May 2
It ends with a whimper as first Santorum and then Gingrich hobble off the stage. After five more major victories in northeastern states (including New York and Pennsylvania), Romney will be the Republican nominee. By May 2, Romney's only opposition - if you can flatter his campaign with the term - is Ron Paul. Completely ignored by both the Romney campaign and the media, Paul perhaps will continue on in his Quixotic fashion, but the likelihood he'll exceed twenty percent in future primaries is slim. The next primaries are on May 8 in Indiana, West Virginia, and North Carolina, but does it really matter? It's time for the majority or Republicans to hold their noses and say "huzzah" for Mitt.
D. Hardin May 3, 2012
April 3: Three More for Romney
Calls for Santorum and Gingrich to Quit on the Rise
A sweep of Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia pushes Romney ever closer to the nomination. April 24 is really Santorum's last chance for any hope of denying Romney the delegates needed to go over the top. If Santorum does not win his "home state" of Pennsylvania (since 2006 he's been living in Northern Virginia and in 2007 bought a $2 million 4-bedroom, 5-bath home on five acres that includes a cobbled drive and heated pool in Great Falls; check it out on Google Earth at 10607 Creamcup Ln., Great Falls, VA 22066), he is done and his lead there is dwindling. Romney is strongly favored to win New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Paul continues on without a hope of winning a single state, but he can manage to continue to snag a handful of delegates here and there in remaining conventions. Unfortunately for him, all of the remaining races are primaries where the delegate pickings are slim. Lately, Gingrich is nowhere to be seen except at book signings, which is probably why he's in the race in the first place.
D. Hardin April 4, 2012
March 20: All Over But the Cryin'?
Has Mitt Romney finally sealed the deal?
Mitt Romney crushed his opponents in more moderate Illinois on March 20th (although he couldn't top 50% again), which makes it mathematically impossible for anyone else to beat him in the all-important math of the delegate count. Gingrich will be the next to leave the race - if his ego will allow it. If he were to drop out, it is apparent that even then Santorum could not defeat Romney or force a brokered convention. The map below also shows something else: the Republican nominating process is so convoluted and chaotic that anything might be possible. Santorum won the Missouri "primary" which was actually a straw poll that awarded no delegates. Without a real campaign organization on the ground, it is entirely possible that Santorum could lose the delegate war there. It's happened before: Ron Paul beat Romney by 11 votes in the U.S. Virginia Islands (112 to 101), but Romney came away with the lion's share of the delegates (7:1 or 4:1, depending on how you calculate it). This is a lawsuit or a convention revolt waiting to happen, quite frankly.
D. Hardin March 22, 2012
Postscript: What happened to Ron Paul in the U.S. Virginia Islands happened to Rick Santorum in North Dakota. Santorum received the most ballots in the initial North Dakota caucuses on March 6 and so is shown as the winner there. However, party bosses came to Romney's rescue at the State Convention (March 30-April 1) when delegates were actually assigned. According to reports posted to The Green Papers election website,
"Convention attendees were provided with a pre-selected slate of delegates, mostly Romney supporters. Santorum and Paul supporters attempted to nominate delegates from the floor. What followed was a parliamentary donnybrook between the Santorum and Paul camps and the party leadership."
So, Santorum may have gotten 4,510 "votes" to Romney's 2,691 (Paul came in second with 3,186) on March 6 and should have come away with 11 delegates to Romney's 7 and Paul's 8, but what actually happened was that by April 1, Romney came away with 20 delegates, Santorum only 6 and Paul only 2. Sounds slimy, huh? Dirty business, politics. Quite a nasty April Fools Day for Rick Santorum.
D. Hardin April 4, 2012
The Illusory Ace Up Rick Santorum's Sleeve
Romney still hasn't knocked Santorum out cold. Santorum already has won states with particularly intense fundamentalist evangelical Protestant Republican primary voters. The map below shows religious adherents - the percentage of the population in each county that belongs to a congregation - which is the only surrogate we have for intensity of religious belief in the United States. It doesn't deal with the nature of the beliefs of the religious population or even what Christian sects are predominant; that is actually the subject of other Census Bureau maps (see the map below). Santorum is likely to sweep the Great Plains and probably will add Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Texas to his southern states haul. It is possible he could win Wisconsin (perhaps less likely after his thrashing in Illinois) and if he stays in, he is bound to win his "home" state of Pennsylvania (he, like Gingrich, has actually lived full-time in Virginia for years). Although Utah shows intense religious adherence, that is Mormon country and will go to Romney. In the end, Santorum's' past and future victories are not enough to win the nomination, force a brokered convention, or even stop Romney from achieving the necessary number of delegates to win. For Romney, the problem is that as Santorum trawls for the extreme right wing of the party, it inevitably makes it more difficult for Romney to credibly move back to the center for the general election campaign - Etch-A-Sketch strategies or not.
D. Hardin March 22, 2012
Postscript: Rather than suffering a humiliating loss in his "home" state, Santorum quit the race on April 10.
Mitt Romney's Western Firewall
While Rick Santorum has struggled to get the votes of his fellow Catholics, Mitt Romney has won every state with a significant percentage of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Below is a map showing the counties where Mormons make up a significant proportion of the population. The Mormon core is in Utah with southeastern Idaho as an additional domain. Several other surrounding states are part of the Mormon sphere of influence, most notably Nevada. Add to that moderate (everything's relative) Republican primary voters on the Left Coast and Romney has an unassailable Santorum-proof western bastion. The fact that Romney does best in more moderate states no doubt keeps the Obama campaign team awake at night. Why didn't Romney win Colorado? Because the Colorado Piedmont (think Colorado Springs) is a fundamentalist evangelical Protestant stronghold.
D. Hardin March 22, 2012
The Anybody-But-Mitt Train Derails at Last
Over the past year, Mitt Romney - the front-runner in the Republican nomination battle - has seen insurgents make a big splash on the scene, briefly surpass him in polls, but then recede. Below is a graphic from RealClearPolitics to which I've added shading for the surges that overtook Romney this year. First it was Perry, then Cain, then Gingrich the first and second times, and finally Santorum. By the second week of March 2012, Santorum's star faded in the national polls of Republican voters. All that time, Mitt's numbers slowly trended upward. The Mitt-haters out there finally have run out of alternatives. Romney still hasn't exceeded 40%, but he's getting there.
D. Hardin March 22, 2012
