First Posted: 02/ 7/2012 7:59 pm Updated: 02/ 7/2012 11:46 pm
The Minnesota caucus, Colorado caucus and Missouri primary drew voters to the polls on Tuesday to have their voices heard in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Rick Santorum was projected the winner of Missouri's primary by NBC News. Mitt Romney was projected to finish second with Ron Paul in third. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did not qualify to appear on the state's ballot.
Shortly after the results came in for Missouri's primary, Santorum was projected to finish in first place in Minnesota. ABC News projected Ron Paul to finish in second place in the North Star state.
HuffPost's Mark Blumenthal reports:
The Missouri primary [was] a "beauty contest" vote. Although the precinct caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota [began] the process of selecting delegates to the national Republican convention, that process has no formal connection to the "straw votes" ... held at the precinct meetings in each state. So technically, the votes in the two caucus states [being] reported on Tuesday are also non-binding.(Click here to check out HuffPost's maps for results in each state, which will update with real-time data as the numbers come in.)
Check out the live blog below for the latest developments out of Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado.
2:44 AM – Today
What Santorum Wins Tonight
Rick Santorum and his campaign had a very good night Tuesday. Or, if you prefer, Mitt Romney had a very bad night. Romney's loss of the Missouri "beauty contest" primary was no big deal in the larger scheme of things. Losing Minnesota, on the other hand, was worse. And losing Colorado was a disaster.
Like a lot of people, I figured that Romney would use results in Nevada, Colorado and Michigan to bridge the gap between the early primaries and Super Tuesday. It didn't happen.
So the Santorum camp is cheered by tonight's results. But it's very possible to overstate Santorum's gains. At the end of the night, he added no delegates to his tally: All of these contests were nonbinding. So all of Santorum's achievements tonight were of the more ephemeral variety. This is not to say they aren't significant. To my mind, here's what Santorum gets out of the night.
1. A rationale to carry on in the race
Back when South Carolina was wrapping up its primary, the Santorum campaign could bear the loss by saying, "Three contests, three winners." But with a third-place finish in Florida and a fourth-place finish in Nevada, Santorum was teetering close to the edge of the map, and Newt Gingrich was renewing his call for get him to quit the race. Tonight's results prove that Gingrich's demands were premature. In fact, now it's Gingrich that doesn't look like he has a sound rationale to continue. (Gingrich, of course, is well beyond "sound rationales" by now.)
2. A new "electability" argument
Santorum can take tonight's victories and couple them with recent poll fluctuations to make an argument that he is now the candidate that can beat Barack Obama in November. It's an admittedly thin case, but you can expect him to make it. Begin with the fact that Santorum's central argument is that he can cut a starker contrast with Obama than can Romney and Gingrich for a number of reasons -- the fact that both have supported all or parts of what became "Obamacare" being the pre-eminent one.
Next, you can expect Santorum to point to the most recent Rasmussen poll, which came back with a surprising result: The survey said that Santorum was the only GOP candidate that would prevail over Obama, by a 45-to-44 margin. Romney, the poll found, would lose 47 to 43.
Now, I'd call that Rasmussen result an outlier, but that won't stop Santorum from hyping it. And he'll likely make a big deal about the Washington Post/ABC poll that suggested Romney would lose a head-to-head matchup with Obama by a 51-to-45 margin.
Why shouldn't he? The Romney campaign has positively flipped out over that result, mounting a frenzied pushback that's honestly pretty outsized for a February head-to-head poll result.
Why would you freak out over that sort of poll result? I'm guessing that it's because it undermines your electability argument at the worst possible time.
3. 'Momentum'
You know, whatever "momentum" is. Chances are, we'll be able to measure momentum in the number of news stories about Santorum that come out between now and Sunday morning. There should be quite a lot -- and it will be nice to get credit for a win the day after, rather then three weeks after it would have mattered, as was the case with Santorum's Iowa win.
The political media were prepping a "Santorum surge" narrative even before the evening began -- and that was well before anyone realized that Romney was going to lose Colorado. The double-edged sword here, of course, is that the moment the media start taking you seriously is the moment that scrutiny of your record intensifies.
4. Romney gets put in a bind.
We'll get more stories about his inability to "close the deal." We'll hear about how he badly underperformed tonight, as compared with his 2008 results. And it will be interesting to see if Romney is forced to re-engage.
In the past three weeks, Mitt's been crated up, lashed to the roof of the car and driven from stump speech to stump speech. According to the Washington Post, it's been three weeks since he's taken a question from a voter. And he's been kept away from the media as well.
There's a good reason why that is: "the more they learn about Mitt Romney, the less they like him."
So those are some nice short-term advantages for Santorum. In the long run, however, it won't matter much unless the wins add to his war chest, earn him endorsements and allow his campaign to build out its ability to compete across the nation. Mostly, Santorum needs cash, because right now, cash rules everything around Mitt Romney.
And if Santorum's Colorado win has Team Romney reaching for the panic button, remember what happens when that gets pressed: It unleashes an unholy deluge of attack ads across the full spectrum of human consciousness.
By and large, Romney held his powder in the states where tonight's competitions were held. That's going to be cited as the reason Romney faltered tonight, and so that's going to change. (Santorum could also really benefit from Gingrich dropping out; he and Newt will probably go halfsies on the non-Paul Not Romney votes in Arizona. But Newt's staying in.)
-- Jason Linkins
Like a lot of people, I figured that Romney would use results in Nevada, Colorado and Michigan to bridge the gap between the early primaries and Super Tuesday. It didn't happen.
So the Santorum camp is cheered by tonight's results. But it's very possible to overstate Santorum's gains. At the end of the night, he added no delegates to his tally: All of these contests were nonbinding. So all of Santorum's achievements tonight were of the more ephemeral variety. This is not to say they aren't significant. To my mind, here's what Santorum gets out of the night.
1. A rationale to carry on in the race
Back when South Carolina was wrapping up its primary, the Santorum campaign could bear the loss by saying, "Three contests, three winners." But with a third-place finish in Florida and a fourth-place finish in Nevada, Santorum was teetering close to the edge of the map, and Newt Gingrich was renewing his call for get him to quit the race. Tonight's results prove that Gingrich's demands were premature. In fact, now it's Gingrich that doesn't look like he has a sound rationale to continue. (Gingrich, of course, is well beyond "sound rationales" by now.)
2. A new "electability" argument
Santorum can take tonight's victories and couple them with recent poll fluctuations to make an argument that he is now the candidate that can beat Barack Obama in November. It's an admittedly thin case, but you can expect him to make it. Begin with the fact that Santorum's central argument is that he can cut a starker contrast with Obama than can Romney and Gingrich for a number of reasons -- the fact that both have supported all or parts of what became "Obamacare" being the pre-eminent one.
Next, you can expect Santorum to point to the most recent Rasmussen poll, which came back with a surprising result: The survey said that Santorum was the only GOP candidate that would prevail over Obama, by a 45-to-44 margin. Romney, the poll found, would lose 47 to 43.
Now, I'd call that Rasmussen result an outlier, but that won't stop Santorum from hyping it. And he'll likely make a big deal about the Washington Post/ABC poll that suggested Romney would lose a head-to-head matchup with Obama by a 51-to-45 margin.
Why shouldn't he? The Romney campaign has positively flipped out over that result, mounting a frenzied pushback that's honestly pretty outsized for a February head-to-head poll result.
Why would you freak out over that sort of poll result? I'm guessing that it's because it undermines your electability argument at the worst possible time.
3. 'Momentum'
You know, whatever "momentum" is. Chances are, we'll be able to measure momentum in the number of news stories about Santorum that come out between now and Sunday morning. There should be quite a lot -- and it will be nice to get credit for a win the day after, rather then three weeks after it would have mattered, as was the case with Santorum's Iowa win.
The political media were prepping a "Santorum surge" narrative even before the evening began -- and that was well before anyone realized that Romney was going to lose Colorado. The double-edged sword here, of course, is that the moment the media start taking you seriously is the moment that scrutiny of your record intensifies.
4. Romney gets put in a bind.
We'll get more stories about his inability to "close the deal." We'll hear about how he badly underperformed tonight, as compared with his 2008 results. And it will be interesting to see if Romney is forced to re-engage.
In the past three weeks, Mitt's been crated up, lashed to the roof of the car and driven from stump speech to stump speech. According to the Washington Post, it's been three weeks since he's taken a question from a voter. And he's been kept away from the media as well.
There's a good reason why that is: "the more they learn about Mitt Romney, the less they like him."
So those are some nice short-term advantages for Santorum. In the long run, however, it won't matter much unless the wins add to his war chest, earn him endorsements and allow his campaign to build out its ability to compete across the nation. Mostly, Santorum needs cash, because right now, cash rules everything around Mitt Romney.
And if Santorum's Colorado win has Team Romney reaching for the panic button, remember what happens when that gets pressed: It unleashes an unholy deluge of attack ads across the full spectrum of human consciousness.
By and large, Romney held his powder in the states where tonight's competitions were held. That's going to be cited as the reason Romney faltered tonight, and so that's going to change. (Santorum could also really benefit from Gingrich dropping out; he and Newt will probably go halfsies on the non-Paul Not Romney votes in Arizona. But Newt's staying in.)
-- Jason Linkins
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