With 45 of 45 precincts reporting, Mitt Romney has won the Republican caucuses in Hawaii. Romney received 45 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum 25 percent, Ron Paul 18 percent, and Newt Gingrich 11 percent.
While Romney also won the contest in American Samoa yesterday, picking up all nine delegates there, Santorum won the two biggest contests on Tuesday--Alabama and Mississippi. In those Southern states, Gingrich came in second, while Romney finished in third place.
Rick Santorum won two surprise victories last night in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, and he did so by poaching voters from Newt Gingrich’s coalition. To appreciate this, let’s take a look at some data.
First, the topline numbers in the four Deep Southern states that have voted so far.
“Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign,” Mitt Romney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. Oops. For weeks, Team Romney and many of its allies have been eager—one might even say desperate—to end this campaign. The Republican primary electorate has been resisting this, and the voters in Alabama and Mississippi engaged in massive resistance yesterday, giving Romney less than a third of their votes.
Today is a relatively big day in the GOP nomination battle -- with caucuses in American Samoa and Hawaii and primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. The main story is in the South, though. And although this Southern Super Tuesday has relatively few delegates at stake – just 84 are up for grabs between the Alabama and Mississippi primaries – it will likely attract a good deal of attention. It will also offer something we have not yet seen: a roughly equal three-way battle between Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.
A national CBS News poll taken after Iowa and released today shows that no one in the Republican presidential field has the support of even 20 percent of GOP primary voters. The poll shows Mitt Romney leading with 19 percent support, followed relatively closely by Newt Gingrich (15 percent), and Rick Santorum (14 percent).
In its fight with the state over immigration, President Obama’s Justice Department is treating Alabama as if it hasn’t changed since the ugly segregationist days of the 1960s.
In control of the Alabama legislature and governorship for the first time in 137 years, Republicans sent a clear message that they’re bent on delivering conservative change. In fact, the shock of the their passage of major fiscal and social legislation is still reverberating, especially on the issue of immigration.
