The Momentum Finally Shifts, Slightly, To Romney

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I’ve previously looked in detail at the breakdown of GOP primary votes here, here and here; for purposes of this series, I’ve broken out the votes in three groups – the five conservative candidates (Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann and Cain), the two moderate candidates (Romney and Hunstman) and the libertarian (Paul) – for reasons explained in the first post. In my second post, I detailed the signs to look for to see whether and when Romney would start putting the race away with the voters rather than simply plodding through the accumulation of delegates.

After the March 24 vote in Louisiana and Tuesday’s votes in Wisconsin, Maryland and DC, we can see the signs of that momentum shift, but only slightly, with stubborn resistance to Romney still continuing. Not-unrelatedly, we can see the collapse of Newt Gingrich’s campaign to levels even lower than he was getting in February, the last time he went a month without being on the ballot in any Southern state (recall that Newt was not on the Missouri ballot). Let’s start with the month-by-month running tally:

Candidate	JANUARY	%	FEBRUARY	%	MARCH	%	APRIL	%
Romney	1,071,678	40.5%	741,495	40.6%	2,181,105	37.6%	466,928	45.4%
Santorum	378,995	14.3%	692,296	37.9%	1,748,498	30.1%	358,668	34.9%
Gingrich	817,770	30.9%	160,360	8.8%	1,219,154	21.0%	72,509	7.0%
Paul	278,729	10.5%	215,023	11.8%	578,435	10.0%	111,129	10.8%
Huntsman	50,049	1.9%	2,817	0.2%	15,387	0.3%	6,851	0.7%
Perry	23,592	0.9%	6,293	0.3%	23,581	0.4%	1,041	0.1%
Bachmann	10,856	0.4%	3,480	0.2%	8,688	0.1%	6,054	0.6%
Cain	10,046	0.4%	3,555	0.2%	39	0.0%	–	0.0%
Rest	4,742	0.2%	1,528	0.1%	29,142	0.5%	5,416	0.5%
Conservatives	1,241,259	46.9%	865,984	47.4%	2,999,960	51.7%	438,272	42.6%
Moderates	1,121,727	42.4%	744,312	40.7%	2,196,492	37.8%	473,779	46.1%
Libertarians	278,729	10.5%	215,023	11.8%	578,435	10.0%	111,129	10.8%
TOTAL	2,646,457		1,826,847		5,804,029		1,028,596

This looks like a significant shift to Romney after the deterioration of his numbers in March, but as with his rough showing in March, you have to bear in mind the calendar: all three primaries on Tuesday were in blue territory (deep blue in the case of Maryland and DC, plus Santorum wasn’t on the ballot in DC, whereas Wisconsin has been much more favorable lately to Republicans, with Tea Party-backed Republicans Ron Johnson and Scott Walker winning statewide in 2010). The real dynamic remains mostly the same, with Romney’s supporters and opponents just not evenly distributed geographically. Let’s update the red/blue/purple numbers, previously broken out here, again excluding Virginia because none of the conservatives were on the ballot:

Candidate	RED	%	PURPLE	%	BLUE	%
Romney	1,273,119	30.0%	1,399,566	41.8%	1,630,401	46.7%
Santorum	1,270,691	30.0%	752,636	22.5%	1,155,130	33.1%
Gingrich	1,260,389	29.7%	764,660	22.9%	244,744	7.0%
Paul	357,218	8.4%	325,541	9.7%	392,965	11.3%
Huntsman	7,706	0.2%	55,362	1.7%	12,036	0.3%
Perry	15,892	0.4%	28,595	0.9%	10,020	0.3%
Bachmann	9,959	0.2%	10,390	0.3%	8,729	0.3%
Cain	8,677	0.2%	3,722	0.1%	1,241	0.0%
Rest	34,938	0.8%	4,600	0.1%	33,427	1.0%
Conservatives	2,565,608	60.5%	1,560,003	46.6%	1,419,864	40.7%
Moderates	1,280,825	30.2%	1,454,928	43.5%	1,642,437	47.1%
Libertarians	357,218	8.4%	325,541	9.7%	392,965	11.3%
TOTAL	4,238,589		3,345,072		3,488,693

As you can see, the vote totals for April are actually slightly more favorable to the conservatives in general, and less favorable to Romney, than the overall blue-state numbers. That’s not to say that Romney underperformed, per se; Santorum had been leading him in Wisconsin until the campaign and its related advertising blitz started there in earnest after Louisiana, and while Romney had won narrow primary victories in Michigan and Ohio, Santorum had previously won caucuses in Minnesota and Iowa. So, Wisconsin was far from a natural gimme for Romney, and his win there – while hardly overwhelming, with he and Huntsman still combining for less than 45% of the vote – can’t be ascribed solely to being on blue turf. Sean Trende went in more demographic detail the day before the vote to explain why Wisconsin could be a sign of momentum shift. On the other hand, Romney was unable to muster a majority in deep-blue Maryland, where John McCain won almost 55% of the vote against Mike Huckabee on February 12, 2008; McCain also won almost 55% a week later in Wisconsin. Thus, the break to Romney is happening at the margins, and is not yet the stampede that McCain was enjoying by mid-February in 2008, when a smaller bloc of social conservative voters were holding out for Mike Huckabee (McCain would go on to win majorities in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island on March 4 before Huckabee dropped out). The sense that Romney is winning over the objections of a majority of the party’s voters will not be dispelled any time soon; the best he can hope for is a determined resignation to put the primary slog out of its misery and move on to the general election.

The collapse of the Newt campaign may also be overstated somewhat here (he’s been getting clobbered in the blue states all year), but there really seems to be no life left in Newt’s cash-strapped operation besides protest votes (full disclosure: I cast a vote yesterday for Newt by absentee for New York’s April 24 primary, purely as a protest; I might have voted for Perry if he’d been on the ballot). Amusing, neither-here-nor-there detail: with Perry and Cain not on the ballot, Michele Bachmann actually drew more votes in Wisconsin than she has in any other state, 8 more than she got in Iowa.

Finally, let’s update the state-by-state tally – Virginia and DC are marked with asterisks because of the absence of major candidates from the ballot, Guam and American Samoa are excluded because I couldn’t find popular vote totals:

STATE (Date)	Category	Type	Conservatives	Moderates	Libertarians
GA 3/6	RED	Primary	67.1%	26.1%	6.6%
KS 3/10	RED	Caucus	65.9%	21.1%	12.6%
LA 3/24	RED	Primary	65.7%	26.8%	6.1%
MS 3/13	RED	Primary	65.0%	30.5%	4.4%
AL 3/13	RED	Primary	64.4%	29.2%	5.0%
OK 3/6	RED	Primary	62.1%	28.3%	9.6%
TN 3/6	RED	Primary	61.8%	28.3%	9.0%
SC 1/21	RED	Primary	58.9%	28.0%	13.0%
MO 2/7	RED	Primary*	57.7%	25.8%	12.2%
MN 2/7	BLUE	Caucus	55.7%	16.9%	27.2%
IA 1/3	PURPLE	Caucus	53.2%	25.1%	21.4%
CO 2/7	PURPLE	Caucus	53.2%	34.9%	11.8%
OH 3/6	PURPLE	Primary	52.3%	38.5%	9.2%
ND 3/6	RED	Caucus	48.2%	23.7%	28.1%
FL 1/31	PURPLE	Primary	46.1%	46.8%	7.0%
MI 2/28	BLUE	Primary	44.9%	41.3%	11.6%
IL 3/20	BLUE	Primary	43.6%	46.7%	9.3%
WI 4/3	BLUE	Primary	43.5%	44.8%	11.2%
AK 3/6	RED	Caucus	43.4%	32.5%	24.1%
AZ 2/28	RED	Primary	43.2%	47.3%	8.4%
MD 4/3	BLUE	Primary	40.2%	49.8%	9.5%
WY 2/29	RED	Caucus	39.9%	39.2%	20.9%
HI 3/13	BLUE	Caucus	36.3%	45.4%	18.3%
WA 3/3	BLUE	Caucus	34.1%	37.6%	24.8%
VT 3/6	BLUE	Primary	32.8%	41.7%	25.5%
NV 2/4	PURPLE	Caucus	31.1%	50.1%	18.8%
ME 2/11	BLUE	Caucus	24.7%	38.0%	36.1%
ID 3/6	RED	Caucus	20.3%	61.6%	18.1%
NH 1/10	PURPLE	Primary	19.8%	56.1%	22.9%
MA 3/6	BLUE	Primary	17.3%	73.1%	9.6%
DC 4/3	BLUE	Primary*	10.7%	77.2%	12.0%
PR 3/18	Terr	Primary	10.7%	88.0%	1.3%
USVI 3/10	Terr	Caucus	10.7%	26.3%	29.2%
NMI 3/10	Terr	Caucus	9.6%	87.3%	3.2%
VA 3/6	PURPLE	Primary*	0.0%	59.5%	40.5%

It’s nearly three weeks until the next set of primaries on April 24, all in the deep-blue Northeast (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware) except for blue Northeast/Midwest hybrid Pennsylvania, where Santorum – as the hometown favorite son – looks to make his last stand. Santorum trails badly in the polls in all of them besides Pennsylvania, where the polls are moving against him. The others should be be easy wins for Romney even without a momentum shift, but if Santorum loses Pennsylvania, it should convince Santorum – and Gingrich, who should have already – to throw in the towel and admit that, whether the voters like it or not, Mitt Romney is the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.