Mitt Romney won the Maine caucuses tonight, with 39 percent of the vote to Ron Paul’s 36 percent. Santorum came in third with 18 percent, while Gingrich finished last at 6 percent. Around 5600 people voted. And while Romney won, it was far closer than last cycle, when he got 52 percent of the vote and beat John McCain by 30 points.
Maine, like Iowa, Colorado, and Minnesota, has unbound delegates.
While the Maine GOP chair Charlie Webster has declared Romney the winner, not every Maine county’s caucus was counted. Due to inclement weather, one county Paul had thought he would do well in did not caucus. According to the AP, those who caucus on later dates will not have their votes counted by the GOP at the state level, meaning that Romney will remain the winner.
“The voters of Maine have sent a clear message that it is past time to send an outsider to the White House, a conservative with a lifetime of experience in the private sector, who can uproot Washington’s culture of taxing and spending and borrowing and endless bureaucracy,” said Romney in a statement.
But the Paul campaign isn’t giving up. “We are confident that we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August,” said Paul national campaign chairman Jesse Benton in a statement.
Romney’s other win today came at CPAC, where he won the straw poll. Romney was backed by 38 percent of the 3800 who voted there. Santorum placed second (31 percent), followed by Gingrich (15 percent), and Paul (12 percent).
Interesting result. Ron Paul is becoming less and less of a factor. That does not mean we should dismiss him. His solid 10-15% of voters could make or break the general election. I would encourage both Mitt and Rick Santorum to embrace tea party principles. External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo Ron Paul is becoming more and more of a factor. Romney did not win Mane and every one knows it. The GOP moved Washington County up because of snow. What snow? They did it so it would not show a RP win in Mane before super Tuesday. They knew RP was a heavy favorite in Washington County. The GOP is simply crooked. Romney can not and will not beat Obama without the RP supporters and the GOP knows that, and Romney will never get those supporters. Keep a close eye on Tampa Fla and the Ron Paul end game. His supporters are die in the woods and they work very hard at becoming delegates. No other candidate has the ground game that RP has. Selling him short is a huge mistake.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseListening to Mitt call himself a conservative reminds me of Obama supporters calling him a moderate. Thoroughly unconvincing and dependent on constant spin to reaffirm the falsehood.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnn Coulter thinks Mitt is not just a conservative but the "most" conservative candidate in the race.
Who's more credible Ann Coulter a smart intelligent beautiful woman or someone like Rush Limbaugh a guy who picks his nose on TV in front of millions of football fans?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseClearly, it was Big Gov't Santorum's thoroughly unconvincing spin to reaffirm a falsehood that the conservative base at CPAC found harder to buy.
Looks like the best Santorum can muster when in real competition with Romney is a virtual tie in Evangelical grass roots Iowa. tsk
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou must have written that last week and it was slow to post.
Are you arguing Romney did not 'really compete' in Colorado last Tuesday?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe competed, but not like he did in Nevada, Florida, etc. Romney spent extremely little time in Colorado, and bought no TV adds (seriously, I think it was zero adds - and his superPAC was not active, either). So, yeah, he wanted to win the state, but thought he could get away with minimal expenditures in time and TV buys. Santorum certainly gets credit for the win (non-binding though it is), but let's not pretend he had to deal with Romney's full efforts. Let's see how Santorum does in Arizona (he'll get crushed there) and maybe more interestingly Michigan (where Romney's lead isn't so dominant). If Santorum can win Michigan, we can really start talking about him being a threat to Romney. Until then, Santorum will remain an un-vetted, untested candidate. Santorum should have some money now to compete in these next couple of states, so let's see what happens.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI read somewhere that Romney (as well as Gingrich) did only a handful of campaign stops in CO, MN and MO, whereas Santorum did something like a couple dozen such stops. Santorum was clearly "all in" for those states, whereas Romney was not. This probably owes to the fact that they were all largely "beauty contests," where delegates were either not officially awarded based on the ballots cast or said delegates are allowed to change their candidate affiliations at a later date.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll make that argument.
For the life of me, I don't understand it (given Romney's advantage in terms of funding and organization), but his camp seemed to think that the "momentum" from FL and NV and the governor's performance in CO and MN last cycle would be sufficient. Romney made few campaign appearances and didn't buy much advertising.
I'm no political genius, but I know that voters want candidates to at least ask for their votes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood assessment, I completely agree. It was a strategic miscalculation on Romney’s campaign not to compete strongly in CO.
Though the mistake worked itself out nicely; Romney had a very nice weekend. Winning Maine is good but winning at CPAC is amazing!
In the heart of grassroots conservatism Romney did compete head to head with Santorum & Gingrich and he won a decisive win over both.
The far right media complex & MSM tried to make a mountain out of molehill of the word “severely” and the tactic didn’t work. Even with Limbaugh tried to make Romney out to be strange for calling himself severely conservative & didn’t work.
As a conservative who lives in deep blue far far far left liberal land of the SF Bay Area, I can understand Romney’s sentiment of feeling severely conservative in MA.
Romney's speech was far superior and presidential than Santorum's and Gingrich.
Also Gov.McDonnell of VA and Ann Coulter gave very impressive speeches @ CPAC. They didn't forget like Cain & Perry did and both advocated strongly with great intelligence why they support Mitt Romney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSort of like when the Newtnics refer to their guy as a decent human being? Cordially, Bill
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am exceedingly impressed by this solid Romney win, far more meaningful than the Missouri primary where Santorum got forty or so times as many votes. (And I'm adding in Romney's CPAC result, by the way.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAll those RINOs at CPAC chose Romney? That's sarcasm by the way. Any hope this changes the narrative regarding Romney any? So many pundits keep claiming he's not conservative despite several prominent Conservative endorsements and a record of supporting conservative principles against a hostile public and legislature.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat the pundit class has failed to mention when recalling Romney's victories in Colorado, Missouri, Minnesota, and Maine in 2008 is that they came well after McCain was the obvious winner of the nomination. So it isn't so much his support dwindled this time, it was never there in the first place - he was the Not McCain of 2008.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe other obvious difference is that Romney did not expend the time, money, or political ads targeting Santorum in non binding Missouri & Minnesota in 2012.
Romney lost in 2008 because Hucklebee split the conservative vote.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere to begin.
Um...Colorado and Minnesota were on Super Tuesday last time. McCain did not have it wrapped-up until after Super Tuesday.
Maine was BEFORE Super Tuesday.
Romney did not win Missouri last time. In fact, he cost Huckabee the state (not the other way around).
Your idea that Romney would have won FOUR states after McCain was the clear nominee should have tipped you off you might need to check your history.
Romney was buried by 2/14..endorsing McCain...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAccording to the NYT:
"The Romney campaign was working aggressively behind the scenes for a strong showing, including busing students from colleges along the Eastern Seaboard to show their support."
That certainly makes for a fair and impartial CPAC poll result, don't you think, NRO editors?
In other news, "some Maine communities have yet to hold their caucuses, though party leaders say they don’t plan to count those votes."
Yet another clean win for Moneybags Mitt.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis archaic system of caucuses, primaries, "Super Tuesday," unbound delegates, etc. really has to go. It's all become a stupid game. The only people it benefits is the news media, which constantly needs new content to fill the 24-hour cycle.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe number that jumps out at me is 5,600. I grew up in a little Texas town about 80 miles southwest of Dallas that had one stop light and two yellow blinkers, and there were more people living there and in the surrounding five miles of country side than participated in the Maine Republican Caucuses.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf that is a normal number then the Maine caucuses are not representative of anything. If it's less than usual, then the Republican Party has a problem on its hands. Democratic primaries had horribly low turnout right two years ago, and it presaged the GOP takeover of the House. Given the low participation numbers in just about every GOP primary and caucus so far, it is becoming distressingly clear that Republican voters are not at all happy with this field and are not at all energized -- no matter what they tell pollsters -- about the vote in November. 5,600 voters for an entire state -- even one as small as Maine -- is just pathetic.
MReed53, in 2008, the turnout for the GOP caucuses in ME was approximately 5,000.
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