Today is rightly titled as super Tuesday. Ten states are voting in the caucuses for a total of 419 delegates, which might determine tonight who will be the GOP nominee who faces Barack Obama in the general election. 1,144 total delegates are needed to clinch the nomination which will officially take place at the Republican National Convention (RNC) this August in Tampa, Florida.
Mitt Romney has been reluctantly described by GOP voters as the best candidate to defeat Barack Obama, even though many GOP voters are not enthuasiastic about Romney.
Romney is currently the front runner and tonight will determine whether he will deliever a knock out blow, or whether there is a long primary debate between the main challengers to Romney; Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Ron Paul is also still attracting votes particularly in Virginia, but it is very unlikely he will win the nomination.
Many races were not surprising. Rick Santorum won Tennessee, Newt Gingrich won Virginia, Romney as expected, easily won in Virginia as both Santorum and Gingrich were not on the ballot. Romney also won Vermont and his home state of Massachusetts. Santorum has won a key victory in Tennessee, which Gingrich had hoped to win. Santorum also won the Oklahoma as expected in most prior polls.
Results for Idaho and Alaska are still coming in. North Dakota now has been confirmed as a Santorum voctory. Idaho is currently starting to report, but it looks like it could be a Mitt Romney Win.
The big question mark tonight is the state of Ohio. In 2000, Former President George Bush, who won the general election against Al Gore, won the state of Ohio. In 2004, Bush eked out a small victory in Ohio to defeat Democratic challenge, John Kerry. In 2008, current President Barrack Obama won the state as he cruised to victory.
Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are in a dead heat race to win the state. Ohio is a swing state in the general elections and if Romney wins there could be heavy pressure on Santorum to quit the race. If Santorum wins the race will likely drag on for a while.
ValueWalk is updating the results live with data straight from the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. At the time of this writing the results are as follows.
CNN exit polls showed Mitt Romney winning at 40% and Rick Santorum winning 36% of the vote, with the rest being split among the other competitors. In every state exit polls revealed that the economy was the number one concern among voters.
Mitt Romney appears to be winning the absentee votes and the metropolitan areas, while Santorum appears to have a slight lead in rural areas.
with 71% of the 9421 precincts reporting currently reporting, the results are being called too close to call:
Santorum | 311,120 votes | |
Romney | 295,638 votes |
Santorum | 346,161 | 38% |
Romney | 340,560 | 37% |
Santorum | 347,897 | 38% |
Romney | 341,880 | 37% |
10:45PM EST, 84% reporting:
Santorum | 360,216 | 38% |
Romney | 357,429 | 37% |
10:48PM EST, 85% reporting:
Santorum | 361,976 | 38% |
Romney | 359,171 | 37% |
10:53PM EST: The Romney campaign is now claiming that they will win Ohio. Many of the votes left are in the large cities, which lean towards Romney.
11:00PM EST, 86% reporting:
Santorum | 370,558 | 38% |
Romney | 367,388 | 37% |
11:02PM EST, switching to the overall campaign: Updated delegate count: Romney 288, Santorum 106, Gingrich 73, Ron Paul 52. As stated above 1144 delegates are needed to win.
11:19PM EST, 88% reporting:
Romney has finally taken the lead over Santorum.
Romney | 411,871 | 38% |
Santorum | 408,091 | 37% |
11:24PM EST, 89% reporting:
Romney | 417,562 | 38% |
Santorum | 413,600 | 37% |
11:27PM EST, 90% reporting:
Romney | 420,112 | 38% |
Santorum | 414,748 | 37% |
11:30PM EST, 91% reporting:
Romney | 423,747 | 38% |
Santorum | 417,885 | 37% |
Ohio state law requires a recount if the margin of victory is less than 0.25%.
11:46PM EST, 93% reporting:
Romney | 432,585 | 38% |
Santorum | 426,220 | 37% |
11:58PM EST, the last votes are slowly trickling in. It is possible that the winner will not be known until tomorrow, an as noted above there could be a recount. We will wrap up our coverage now. However based on the demographics remaining districts’ in Ohio, and with Romney’s current lead we project he will be the winner of Ohio.
These results are being updated constantly and ValueWalk will call a winner when a front winner evolves.