Regular readers will have noted that I predicted an easy run for Mitt Romney between the Florida primary and Super Tuesday. Well, what do I know?
We now know that Republican supporters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri had very different ideas, with Rick Santorum winning all three contests on Tuesday. It looks as if the enthusiasm deficit for Romney has jumped up and bit him in the bum – three low turnout elections have been partly the reason for a collapse in Romney’s vote and have enabled a highly motivated conservative base to win through.
Let’s have a look at all three.
Colorado Caucus
The graph above shows the votes for the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries in Colorado. Romney won in 2008 by taking 60% of the vote, but plummeted to 35% on Tuesday.
Colorado is the contest of the three where the turnout drop was least significant: the drop was only 6% here.
To give Santorum his due, the main factor here was a motivated turnout by highly conservative voters he had wooed. Santorum made 9 visits to the state in the last month, compared to the 2 visits by Romney. He fought hard to get that 40% share of the vote.
Colorado is a swing state, but that doesn’t mean that it is particularly moderate: it is more a fighting ground for extremely conservative Christians fundos and pretty liberal Democrats. The map below shows the 2008 results by county: Romney the vast majority of counties, including massive leads in the very conservative southern Denver suburbs and Colorado Springs. He also performed strongly in the north of the state and on the Western Slope, along the Utah border where there is a notable Mormon population. He did less well, but still ahead, in the Rockies and in the east of the state.
Fast forward to 2012, and the map below.
Romney ends up wiped out in the Colorado Springs area and the north, along with the east and southwest of the state. He is left holding the most liberal areas around Denver and Boulder, the rich ski resorts around Aspen and Vail and the Mormon north east.
Santorum sweeps pretty much everywhere else, save for a single county won by Gingrich.
Minnesota Caucus
If things went badly in Colorado for Romney, they were disastrous for him in Minnesota.
Romney’s vote collapsed from almost 26,000 in 2008 to just over 8,000 in 2012. He dropped from first to third place. He failed to win in a single county, despite the fact that the state’s last Republican governor and one-time presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty endorsed him.
Again, Santorum worked Minnesota hard: eight visits to Romney’s one (and Gingrich’s none).
Ron Paul also put in four visits, and took second place. He gained 11.5% since 2008, going from 15.7% to 27.2%.
The map above shows the distribution of the vote in 2008. Romney’s strongest performance was around the Twin Cities, whilst Huckabee took conservative rural areas to the northern and southern edges of the state.
Below is the map from last Tuesday. Romney fails to win a single county in the state he won four years ago. Santorum sweeps the state, and is particularly strong in the rural parts of the state.
Ron Paul picked up a small number of counties, but he also ran Santorum reasonably close in a number of areas (the light yellows) in the centre of the state and around the Twin Cities.
Missouri Primary
Missouri was a bit of an odd contest, in that it didn’t really count. This year, the state decided to resolve the question of whether to hold a primary election or a caucus by doing both. So, Tuesday saw an open primary (i.e. open to voters not registered as Republicans) which will not select any delegates as an indicative vote, to be followed on 17 March by a caucus that will select delegates.
Perhaps this is not surprising for a state with such a confused identity. Geographers call it Mid-Western, but it is the only state that still had slaves at the outbreak of the Civil War not to be termed Southern. Is it pronounced the Mid-Western “Missouri” or the Southern “Missoura”?
The geography of that split isn’t obvious either: whilst places in the south like Branson are definitely southern, so are places in the north: my cousin’s husband describes himself as a southern boy but came from St Joseph in the north west of the state, and Mark Twain’s Hannibal, the basis for true southerners Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, is in the north east. Yet politicians like Harry Truman (from Independence) and Dick Gephardt (from St. Louis) are undoubtedly Mid-Westerners.
Given this mixed identity, it combines the regions where Romney seems to do least well. And given the fact that the primary did not convert into delegates, Romney stayed away.
As did Paul and Gingrich, the latter not even appearing on the ballot. But Santorum did, making five appearances in the last month. Consequently, he won big, setting him up well for the real contest in March.
This performance might not lead to a win there for him in the caucus, of course. The nature of the election meant that it was probably the most highly motivated, meaning currently the most conservative, that bothered to vote. This could end up being like the Ames straw poll in Iowa in August, that chose Michele Bachmann only for her to sink without trace in the real caucus.
To look at the impact, this is how the map looked in 2008:
As you can see, McCain won around the centre of the state, around the River Missouri and in St Louis. Romney won in the north west around St Joseph, around Jefferson City and Columbia and in St. Louis’ northern suburbs. Huckabee won in the southern rural areas in the north east of the state.
2012 however was a clean sweep for Santorum. The question is only by how much in each county. A little oddly, Romney seems to have done best in the south east of the state. Here’s that map:
Summary
It was a great night for Santorum, who now has won four states (albeit that Missouri doesn’t count) to Romney’s three and Gingrich’s one. Up until now, he looked as if he might be a one hit wonder with his Iowa victory. Santorum is now clearly in it for the long haul.
It was a terrible night for Romney – it looks as if voters are turned off by his front-runner status and stayed away. He was punished for not taking these contests seriously enough.
Expect his campaign to now do two things: first, actually turn up. Second, spend barrow-loads of cash on adverts slagging off Santorum.
If they were terrible for Romney, they were near catastrophic for Gingrich. He didn’t expect to win any, but fourth in Minnesota, only just avoiding fourth in Colorado and no-show in Missouri is a pretty poor evening. He needs to pull something out of the bag quickly, perhaps in the Arizona and Michigan primaries on 28 February, to avoid being totally eclipsed on the right by Santorum.
Finally, they were unspectacular for Ron Paul as well. Paul is apparently making a big play on Maine though, which completes its caucuses on Saturday, and his attention there for his small campaign will have drained resources from Tuesday’s contests.
I still think Romney will probably win, but it is now likely that the win will come a long time after Super Tuesday with a long, drawn out campaign.
However, whilst that is the probable outcome, there is a real possibility now that he might not, at least not in terms of an outright majority of delegates for the Tampa convention. That scenario could still see him win: he is still pretty certain to win more delegates than the other candidates and he may be able to do a deal with one of them to win through – perhaps by picking Santorum as his vice-presidential running mate.
The alternative to that is a brokered convention, where Romney stands aside for another candidate, such as Indiana governor Mitch Daniels or New Jersey governor Chris Christie. This is an unlikely scenario, but a little less unlikely after Tuesday.
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