Today marks the busiest day of the primary season for the 2012 Presidential Election. Leading up to today’s vote, both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have spent the last week campaigning non-stop in our swing-state of Ohio, while both Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul took their campaign efforts elsewhere. Most polls show Romney with a slight edge over Santorum leading in Ohio coming into today, an edge so small, most polls believe it to be within the margin of error. Gingrich hopes to win his home state of Georgia tonight, while Paul focused mainly on Idaho—continuing his campaign efforts in the caucus states.
There are ten states voting in today’s primary race, and 437 delegates at stake for the Republican Party presidential nomination.
The breakdown of the ten states voting today goes like this:
State Number of Delegates
Vermont 17
Alaska 27
North Dakota 28
Idaho 32
Massachusetts 41
Oklahoma 43
Virginia 49
Tennessee 58
Ohio 66
Georgia 76
Total 437
The Republican nominee for the 2012 Presidential Race will be named at the Republican National Convention this August in Tampa, Florida. There are 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination. And so far each candidate has:
Candidate Delegates thus far (minus today’s Super Tuesday results)
Mitt Romney 203
Rick Santorum 92
Newt Gingrich 33
Ron Paul 25
Total 353
Today’s Super Tuesday voting will account for approximately one-third of all delegates, and the returns are expected to go late into the night, due to the close races in many of the ten states—especially Ohio. Ohio is always a very important state for all presidential elections, and usually is a main campaign stop for many nominees. Ohio is both economically and geographically diverse, causing the election results to always be slightly unpredictable! We are lucky to be in such an exciting state every four years.
Regardless of your party or political affiliation, there were many other races to vote for on federal, state, and local levels, as well as issues for our libraries, safety forces, and schools, just to name a few. We here at Dinsmore Public Sector Advisors hope you took the time today to fulfill your civic duty to get out and vote!