Louisiana votes for Santorum

Rick Santorum won the Louisiana Republican primary on Saturday by 22 points over Mitt Romney, his closest competitor. Newt Gingrich finished in third place in Louisiana and Ron Paul finished fourth. Rick Santorum finished with 49% of the popular vote, compared to 27% for Mitt Romney.

Its all about The Religion

Religion played a crucial role in the Louisiana Primary, as Santorum won the majority of votes cast by white evangelical/born-again Christians and Catholics as well.

White evangelicals accounted for nearly six-in-ten Louisiana primary voters, and 56% of them voted for Santorum. Mitt Romney received 21% support from the evangelicals, while Newt Gingrich got 16%. Ron Paul received 5% support from this group.

Santorum also won clear victories among both Protestant and Catholic voters in Louisiana. Roughly 53% of the Protestants supported Santorum, more than twice the number who voted for Romney (25%) or Gingrich (16%). And Santorum received almost as much support from Catholics (46%) as he did from Protestants.

The Fix

This primary allocated only 20 of Louisiana's 46 total Republican delegates. The rest of the delegates will be allocated at the state party convention in June.

And since Mitt Romney won more than 25% of the votes, he'll therefore split the delegates.

So, the scoreboard, as of now, reads 568-273 for Romney!

P.S. - Mitt Romney should avoid another Etch-A-Sketch moment!

Mohit Dayal

Results - Illinois and Puerto Rico

Last week saw Illinois and Puerto Rico hold their Republican primaries. Here are the results, and the analysis.

Puerto Rico

Mitt Romney scored an overwhelming win last weekend in Puerto Rico's Republican presidential primary, trouncing rival Rick Santorum. He won all the 20 delegates to the national convention at stake because he prevailed with more than 50 percent of the vote.

The race was primarily focused on the issue of statehood, and Mitt Romney claimed that he would support statehood for Puerto Ricans, while Santorum said English would have to be the official language of the island if it were to join the United States. Clearly, these comments hurt Santorum's prospects in the Caribbean Island. Leading up to the primaries, Oreste Ramos, former state senator, resigned from a list of delegates backing Santorum following his comments.

Illinois

Mitt Romney comfortably won the Illinois Republican presidential primary securing 47% of the votes. Rick Santorum finished second, but the gap between Romney and Santorum was the real deal. Santorum could manage only 35% of the votes, a gap of more than 12%!

And Rick Santorum has more to worry about, as exit polls released by CNN revealed that Romney edged him among Protestant and Catholic voters, (45-38 and 53-30), reflecting the impact of the former Massachusetts Governor $3 million week-long ad blitz on Santorum’s core support demographics.

Ron Paul edged past Newt Gingrich (9% to 8%) to come in third.

The result of the open primary will see Romney acquiring another 41 new delegates, taking his total tally of delegates to 563, 300 more than Santorum’s 263. Compounding the double-digit popular-vote loss, Santorum was already running at a disadvantage even before voting began after his campaign’s failure to register his candidacy in four of the state’s Congre

ssional districts, an advance loss of ten delegates.

The Maths

Romney now leads Santorum 563 delegates to 263 delegates. Romney is now almost exactly halfway to the 1,144 delegates he would need to clinch the nomination. He needs to win about 46 percent of the available delegates in the remaining two dozen contests.

On the other hand, Santorum, who is 300 delegates behind Romney, would have to win more than two-thirds of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination. The climb to Mt.1144 just got steeper for Santorum after his defeat in Illinois and Puerto Rico.

The Game

After being routed by Romney in the Illinois primary earlier this week, the Santorum campaign would like to revive itself in the state of Louisiana.However, The Romney campaign will now begin to make noises about the fact that now is the time for Santorum to step aside, 'for the sake of the party'.

Romney's thumping victory may also possibly increase the pressure on Newt Gingrich to withdraw from the race. His campaign coffers are now running a deficit, and his last-place finish in Illinois will certainly not trigger a sudden spike in contributions. However, Newt Gingrich must be banking on the Louisiana primary this Saturday to rescue his rapidly waning campaign. Polls show that both Santorum and Newt are leading Romney in the state.

For Romney, both the Illinois and Puerto Rico primaries have given him a breather after Super Tuesday, and has placed him in a commanding position to clinch the candidacy over the next three months. Although its a race too early to call, but Romney seems to have rejuvenated his campaign and the spark, which was missing for some time, seems to be back!

P.S. - Illinois might well have been the primary where Mitt Romney emerged from his own shadow.

Mohit Dayal

Why is Newt Gingrich still in the race?

The biggest question in the last few weeks in current Republican race to become the next US President has been this: “Why is Newt Gingrich still in the race?” After Santorum surged to victories in the Alabama, Mississippi and Kansas primaries, calls have got stronger for Newt Gingrich to leave the race and endorse Rick Santorum in order to make the race more even and balanced. But we have not heard of any signs of giving-up from this eccentric, former House speaker from Georgia.

"Not gonna give up yet!"

A few days ago, there was an interesting piece in the Guardian talking about the impact on the race, if Newt Gingrich exits the race. It assumed, for the sake of argument, that Gingrich voters go to Santorum on the order of two-to-one, and calculated how it would impact the delegate allotment in the states yet to vote. The article concluded that any change in the candidate line-up seems unlikely to shake up the race now, and that a Romney victory is well assured, irrespective of the presence/absence of Gingrich in the race.

But the Red State argues that even though Romney is still the likely nominee, but with Gingrich in the race Romney wins a plurality of the delegates and the votes and that any “objective observer” would say that the only chance there is to stop Romney lies in a united conservative base. The rationale is that most of Romney’s wins are coming when either there is a strong home state like advantage (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or one of the states that have a heavy Mormon populace built in), and there are more people voting against Romney than there is voting for him elsewhere!

Because of certain factors, Gingrich still has an outside chance at the nomination. He has a pan-American appeal, does well in Debates, and has a eccentric, yet charismatic personality. However, he needs to start winning some states, starting with Louisiana (24^th March) For the Speaker, there is no better place to start than Louisiana, a state on which Gingrich plans to focus more than either Romney or Santorum. A win there can prove to be a boost for strong showing in Texas and Florida too. In fact, I feel that even Fox News is supporting his candidature. Also, Newt Gingrich believes that his votes would in fact help Romney and not Santorum, and he doesn’t want to hand over the nomination to Romney on a platter.

But it is not going to be an easy task. Santorum leads the latest polls in the state with 25% of the votes followed by 21% for Romney and 20% for Gingrich. One of the reasons why Gingrich has been attacking Santorum right from the very beginning is that he needs a majority of the conservatives to vote for him. A win here would be a sure boost in the arm of his campaign.

As we’ve mentioned before, Romney’s campaign has fallen back on the “delegate math” to show the electability of their candidate.  Also, CBS puts Mitt Romney’s situation brilliantly as thus in this article that also speaks about the qualities of Santorum as a Presidential candidate, and on Newt hurting his chances:

“Mitt Romney, who came in third in both states (Alabama and Mississippi), is approaching the qualities of some cursed mythological figure who gets stronger on the outside while his insides decay: With each contest, Romney gains delegates but appears to get weaker”.

Personal Opinion: Mitt Romney might have negotiated a secret deal with New Gingrich to keep him in the race, and might have offered him the Vice-Presidential nomination, or perhaps a cabinet berth – although the latter explanation that “there's just nothing else Newt could be doing with his time that's more fun than running for president. After all, Gingrich does appeal to the conservatives, and he might be look good on the ballot J What adds to my conviction (that he has nothing better to do) is the lame technical excuses he’s making for giving reasons why he is still in the race.

P.S. Politic365 has a humourous take on why Newt Gingrich is still in the race J do check it out when you can J

Varun Reddy.

And Santorum surges on…

After his resounding win at Kansas, Santorum arrived at the mini Super-Tuesday (13^th March, 2012) with a lot of hope and confidence. Three states -- Alabama, Mississippi, Hawaii -- and American Samoa went to polls that day, and they had a combined total of 119 delegates: Alabama (50), American Samoa (9), Hawaii (20) and Mississippi (40). But it was not the numbers that mattered anymore, at least not for the Santorum camp. The wins mattered, and they mattered a lot.

"Republicans, why y u no vote for Mitt 

Romney like my ads say you should?"

The polls in Mississippi showed a tight race between the top-three contenders. It was an important race for all the three candidates – Mitt Romney wanted to show he can carry the Southern States in the general elections, Santorum wanted to prove that he is the only viable conservative candidate in fray, and Gingrich wanted to show he can still win outside his home-turf states of South Carolina and Georgia. In the end, it was a close race, in which Santorum came out on top with 33% of the votes, followed by Gingrich and Romney at 31% each. Ron Paul came a distant 4^th with just 4% of the votes. However, the delegates were evenly divided between the top-three candidates, thereby neutralizing the effect of the win for Santorum. The result in Alabama was no less different, with Santorum winning the state with 35% of the votes, followed by Gingrich and Romney at 29% each, Paul coming a distant 4^th at 5%. The delegate share was more skewed that the one in Mississippi though.

The results in American Samoa and Hawaii went on expected lines, with Mitt Romney winning both by a comfortable margin. With that, the current delegate count (as per our estimates) happens to be:

	Delegates so far	AL	MS	AS	HI	Total Delegates
Mitt Romney	412	11	12	6	9	450
Rick Santorum	182	18	13	0	3	216
Newt Gingrich	110	12	12	0	0	134
Ron Paul	45	0	0	0	3	48
UP/EO/UC*	38*	9	3	3	3	56

* Unpledged/Ex-Officio/Uncommitted

What these results (and the ones in Kansas) did was to change the tone of Mitt Romney’s campaign. So far, the Romney campaign has emphasized on three factors regarding their candidate: 1) Electability and 2) Winning streak and 3) Appeal among the larger Republican base. With 2) and 3) being ripped apart to shreds by Santorum’s surge (and also the possibility of Gingrich taking away his votes), the Romney camp has shifted to “he can win the required number of delegates” stance, which is highly defensive in nature. Santorum has managed to snatch many victories in the states he was expected to win well, but each state has its own way of allotting delegates, and this puts a dent in his winning count.

A few more states are up for election next week. Meanwhile, we shall try to see why Gingrich is not giving up that easily, and also on some of the issues that these candidates differ in.

Varun Reddy.

Sharing the spoils of a low-key Saturday...

In what turned out to be a low-key, yet an important Saturday for the Republican primaries, Rick Santorum won just 1 of the 4 regions that went to the polls on 10^th March, 2012, while Romney won the remaining 3 by huge margins, the 3^rd by a process that is both controversial and funny at the same time J

"Suck on that Romney!"

But the lone win was enough to keep the Santorum camp happy and upbeat, as it was the state of Kansas, very much a Republican state – both the senators, all the 4 congressmen, the Governor and the Lt. Governor are all Republicans. Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Catholic are the three most populous religious groups here. No wonder Rick Santorum stormed to a victory here, getting over 51% of the vote. Mitt Romney came a distant second with 21% of the vote, which was enough to cross the threshold of 20% votes required to garner some delegates in the process. Gingrich and Paul came 3^rd and 4^th respectively.

However, Northern Mariana Islands and Guam – which do not have a say in the General Election but do have a say in the nominating process – voted heavily in favour of Mitt Romney, who carried all the 18 delegates available from these two regions.

Before we move on to explain what happened in the Virgin Islands, we will define two terms:

1. Pledged Delegate: A pledged delegate is elected or chosen on the state or local level with the understanding that they will support a particular candidate at the convention. However, pledged delegates are not actually bound to vote for the candidate. Candidates are allowed on a state-by-state basis to review the lists of delegates who have pledged their support and can delete anyone whose support they consider unreliable.

2. Bound Delegate: A pledged delegate who is actually bound to vote for the candidate they are chosen to represent is a bound delegate.

According to “The Huffington Post”, the RNC (Republican National Committee) does not count delegates from states like Iowa in its total. The Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses -- eventually declared for Santorum -- were given huge symbolic importance and played a big role in showing who the party's voters preferred, but did not officially allocate any of the state's 28 delegates to the national convention. Many caucus states are the same way. The role of delegates is to go to the party's national convention and cast their ballot for a presidential candidate.

The United States Virgin Islands Republican caucuses are quite hilarious – they vote of the delegates instead of the candidates themselves! The top six vote receivers became the final delegates.

The candidates included six delegates declaring for Paul, three for Romney, 2 for Gingrich, 2 for Santorum and 9 that had not declared for any candidate. Of all the votes, the plurality of the vote (29%) went to the six delegates of Ron Paul. However, the Romney supporters votes were more focused and concentrated compared to those for Ron Paul, whose votes were more evenly spread among the candidates. The Romney-ites voted in a bloc, and all their three candidates ended up in the top-6. The uncommitted delegate pledged to vote for Mitt Romney, who also had the support of the 3 Super Delegates from these islands. So effectively, Paul won the vote count (29%), but Romney ran away with 7 delegates compared to Ron Paul, who had to be content with just 1 delegate.

With this addition, the new delegate tally is as follows:

	Delegates so far	Guam	Virgin Islands	Northern Marianas	Kansas	Total Delegates
Mitt Romney	412	6	7	9	7	441
Rick Santorum	182	0	0	0	33	215
Newt Gingrich	110	0	0	0	0	110
Ron Paul	45	0	1	0	0	46
Unpledged/Ex-Officio/Uncommitted	38*	0	1	0	0	39

* Jon Huntsman tally of 2 delegates have been added to the “Uncommitted” column because he withdrew his nomination from the race quite a long time ago

Strange are the ways of the mighty and the ignorant. Stay tuned for the results from more Southern States…

Varun Reddy.

Not as Super as expected...

Hi friends

The Super Tuesday was indeed super, with each candidate claiming victory. However the waters of the nomination became murkier after this fateful day i.e. 6th March, 2012.

You must have seen Mohit’s reports on the 10 states that went to polls on Super Tuesday. These states had 419 delegates and 18 unpledged delegates. Some of the delegate-rich states include Georgia (76 total delegates), Ohio (66 total delegates) and Tennessee (58 total delegates). Let’s see how the candidates fared in each state. We’ll tackle the states candidate by candidate:

1. Georgia: One of the first states to declare its results, the state of Georgia was supposed to be the one that would push Newt Gingrich ahead, and anything less than a mightily win would remove him from contention once and for all. He was elected by this state to the Congress for 20 years! And he justified it with a big win (47%) of the votes and a huge chunk of the delegates too. Romney (26%) and Santorum (20%) were way behind.

2. Massachusetts: The state of Massachusetts did not mind Mitt Romney calling Michigan his home state, even though it was this state that brought him to the limelight, where he was elected the Republican Governor of a highly liberal-moderate state for 4 years. They gave him a thumping victory, with over 72% of the votes, carrying all of the state’s delegates.

3. Ohio: After reading Mohit’s excellent analysis of the state, you must have realized one thing - No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. And Romney just managed to edge out Santorum in this state – 38% to 37% - a difference of less than 10,000 votes, which is a reflection on how fractured this race has become! Gingrich came in a distant 3^rd with 15% of the votes.

4. Tennessee: Everyone said this race would be close, and would be the most decisive race after Ohio. Rick Santorum carried this state (37%) but Romney (28%) managed to edge out Newt (24%) to secure a strong 2^nd place showing.

5. Oklahoma: This was the 3^rd state that Romney had to do well in order to prove that he can carry these conservative states in the general election. However, Santorum won this state by more than 16,000 votes, beating Romney 34% to 28%, with Gingrich coming a close 3^rd with 27%. The delegates distribution was much more even, and Santorum’s win was more of a psychological boost than a delegate boost.

6. Virginia: The state was very much in the news for the efforts of Ron Paul to make a solid impression here. Since Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were not present on the Virginia ballot (as they failed to collect 10,000 signatures needed to appear on the ballot), it was expected to be a comfortable win for Mitt Romney However, Ron Paul put up a strong show, and Romney just managed 60% of the overall votes, to Paul’s 40%. However, the bulk of the delegates went to Mitt.

7. Vermont: This was another state that Romney was expected to carry, and he did win it in style, with over 40% of the votes. However, Ron Paul finished a strong 2^nd with 25% of the votes, followed by Santorum with 24% of the votes.

8. Idaho: Backed by a strong Mormon population, Mott Romney won the state of Idaho by a thumping 62%. Santorum and Paul finished 2^nd and 3^rd respectively, but the state was a winner-take-all state. Paul was expected to do much better in this state, as he did a lot of campaigning here. It just did not prove to be enough though.

9. Alaska: The eastern-most state in the USA began its polling very late, and the results were expected to favour Romney. However, former Gov. Sarah Palin felt that the state could go in either direction, as it had something for each candidate. In the end, Romney took 32% of the vote, with Santorum (29%) and Paul (24%) close behind.

10. North Dakota: Another state where Ron Paul was expected to put on a good show proved to be a heart-break for the old geezer. Rock Santorum upstaged POaul winning 40% of the votes to Paul’s 28% and Romney’s 24%

So after a hectic Super Tuesday, it stands at this: Mitt Romney took six states, Rick Santorum took three states, and Newt Gingrich took one state as expected of him, while Ron Paul didn’t take a single state despite his strong showing in many of them.

The delegate count, as of now, should be as follows:

Candidate	GA	MA	OH	TN	OK	VA	VT	ID	AL	ND	Total (ST)	Final Total
MR (187)	21	38	38	16	13	43	9	32	8	7	225	412
RS (93)	3	0	21	29	14	0	4	0	7	11	89	182
NG (30)	52	0	0	10	13	0	0	0	3	2	80	110
RP (24)	0	0	0	0	0	3	4	0	6	8	21	45
JH (2)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
UP/Ex-Officio/UC (36)	0	3	3	3	3	3	0	0	3	0	18	54

We have seen that the clear winner of Super Tuesday is Mitt Romney, with Rick Santorum coming a distant second. However, the results do point out to a few worrying trends:

"Almost there suckers!"

1. Mitt Romney is not trusted enough by the conservatives, not enough to get their votes, as demonstrated by his losses in Oklahoma and Tennessee, and his very close won in Ohio (mostly by the backing of the vast number of moderates there). He has not been able to consolidate his conservative vote-back, a fact that has repeatedly questioned his re-electability quotient.

2. Rick Santorum has made a strong impression in the conservative states, but has failed to make a dent elsewhere. He is coming a regular 2^nd, not enough to win enough delegates for a chance at the nomination.

"Just not my lucky day"

3. Gingrich is almost done with his campaign. Contrary to what he actually feels, the results made it quite clear that this race is a Rick Santorum vs. Mitt Romney race. It is also quite possible that most of the conservative votes are being divided between Santorum and Gingrich, helping Mitt Romney carry most of the states by a comfortable margin. But with just 2 wins, and a poor showing in the other states, Gingrich may just run out of cash to continue his shot at the presidency.

4. Ron Paul is still fighting it out. He has repeatedly said he is going all the way to the convention, and would like to make as much of an impact as he really can. He is yet to win a state though.

Varun Reddy.