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 |
Continue reading The Momentum Finally Shifts, Slightly, To Romney
