News networks project a Newt Gingrich victory in South Carolina Republican primary

If news net­works’ pro­jec­tions are to be believed, Newt Gin­grich has just won the 2012 South Car­oli­na Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, mak­ing him the third can­di­date in the par­ty’s nar­row­ing pres­i­den­tial field to have won a nom­i­nat­ing con­test this month. As pun­dits on cable tele­vi­sion are not­ing, nev­er before have Iowa, New Hamp­shire, and South Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans each picked a dif­fer­ent Repub­li­can as their top choice for the nom­i­na­tion before. That means his­to­ry is being made tonight.

Gin­grich’s vic­to­ry, if con­firmed by the actu­al results, would be a huge boost to his cam­paign head­ing into the Flori­da pri­ma­ry on Jan­u­ary 31st. Gin­grich fin­ished behind most of his remain­ing rivals in both Iowa and New Hamp­shire, but stayed in the race and now appears to have reaped the rewards of being persistent.

Polling done with­in the last few days indi­cat­ed that Gin­grich’s cam­paign was gain­ing momen­tum, lead­ing many pun­dits to spec­u­late that he might win tonight. The for­mer speak­er, who was sacked by his own par­ty after the 1998 midterms, turned in a fierce debate per­for­mance on Thurs­day night and also ben­e­fit­ed from the endorse­ments of Rick Per­ry and Sarah Palin.

The race is expect­ed to imme­di­ate­ly shift to Flori­da, one of the nation’s most pop­u­lous states, begin­ning tomor­row. The four major can­di­dates still in the race (Gin­grich, Rom­ney, San­to­rum, and Paul) have all agreed to a debate on Mon­day night in Tam­pa, the host city for the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Convention.

UPDATE, 4:39 pm: Very few votes have actu­al­ly been tal­lied and report­ed yet. Notice how small the statewide num­bers are… no can­di­date has more than 1,000 votes, and Rom­ney cur­rent­ly has the lead (which prob­a­bly won’t be the case in a few hours). No precincts have ful­ly report­ed yet. These are very ear­ly numbers!

UPDATE, 5:29: Here’s where the race stands now, with 148 of 2,130 precincts report­ing. Gin­grich appears to be build­ing some­thing of a com­mand­ing lead.

UPDATE, 5:38 PM: The mood at FreeRe­pub­lic, a pop­u­lar hang­out for move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives, seems pret­ty jubi­lant tonight. Here’s a sam­pling of the comments:

Boo Yah!

And that hap­pened because peo­ple vote for ideas that appeal to their aspi­ra­tions, hopes and dreams.

This is Newtastic!

— by Vendome

Open Mes­sage to Rove and the GOP: Rom­ney is a fake robot­ic Ken doll that stut­ters and needs to give up run­ning already.

— by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!

Newt… Newt… Newt .……Thank You God for answer­ing our prayers!!!!!!!

— by SweetCaroline

Out­stand­ing. And I hope San­to­rum comes in sec­ond and beats Rom­ney, too. Rick can come off like a stiff…but he is a man of his con­vic­tions. It’s a shame the ear­li­er debates didn’t give him as much face­time as the most recent one. We’ll see how the vote totals come in…

— by SueRae

There seems to be plen­ty of anti-Rom­ney sen­ti­ment on oth­er nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive blogs and forums as well. They’re the only two can­di­dates left that the Repub­li­can base seems to be ral­ly­ing around. Ron Paul has his own con­stituen­cy (lib­er­tar­i­ans) but that group only ascribes to some right wing val­ues, not all.

Whether San­to­rum will have the resources to vig­or­ous­ly con­test Flori­da remains to be seen. But Gin­grich will be land­ing in the Sun­shine State with a burst of momen­tum fol­low­ing his appar­ent vic­to­ry tonight.

As long as Gin­grich can bat­tle to a draw in Flori­da, he’ll be well posi­tioned to move on to Maine and Neva­da, which hold cau­cus­es on Feb­ru­ary 4th.

UPDATE, 7 PM: 1,516 of 2,130 precincts report­ing in. Gin­grich is clear­ly the win­ner. He’s been gain­ing all night and will fin­ish with more than 40% of the vote.

Note that Her­man Cain — the for­mer God­fa­ther’s Piz­za exec­u­tive — is get­ting more votes than Rick Per­ry, Michelle Bach­mann, and Jon Hun­st­man com­bined. If you’re won­der­ing why, it’s prob­a­bly because of this.