Super Tuesday: Who’s winning where

Tonight — as read­ers of the NPI Advo­cate are no doubt aware — is Super Tues­day, tra­di­tion­al­ly the biggest (though not nec­es­sar­i­ly the most piv­otal) night of the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nat­ing sea­son, when more del­e­gates are at stake than at any oth­er point lead­ing up to the nation­al par­ty con­ven­tions at the end of summer.

It’s been an enter­tain­ing evening so far, with some pre­dictable moments (like Newt Gin­grich’s vic­to­ry in Geor­gia) but also the sus­pense of a close race in Ohio between Mitt Rom­ney and Rick Santorum.

More than a dozen states in every region of the coun­try are up for grabs in tonight’s set of con­tests (though most are not win­ner-take-all). Each of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates has at least one state in his win col­umn, with the notable excep­tion of Ron Paul, who has­n’t won any­where yet.

Here is a break­down of who is win­ning where.

First, let’s take a look at the states Mitt Rom­ney has won, or is like­ly to win.

As we can see from the graph­ic to the left, he’s done well in New Eng­land and the Rocky Moun­tain West. He’s also win­ning eas­i­ly in The Old Domin­ion (Vir­ginia), though nei­ther Rick San­to­rum nor Newt Gin­grich were on the bal­lot there. And he appears to be on the cusp of a very nar­row vic­to­ry in Ohio, the Buck­eye State, where Rick San­to­rum had hoped to pull off an upset.

So, not a bad night for Romney.

How­ev­er, Rom­ney is not doing so well in the South or the Mid­west. There, his rivals have cap­tured some impor­tant states.

Let’s take a look at Rick San­to­rum’s win column.

So far, it con­sists of North Dako­ta (which some pun­dits thought Ron Paul might win), Okla­homa, and Ten­nessee. It’s pos­si­ble that San­to­rum will be able to pick up one more state before the night is over — Alas­ka, where the Repub­li­can cau­cus­es are already underway.

Newt Gin­grich, mean­while, has pre­vailed in his home state of Geor­gia, but that’s the only place where he is win­ning tonight. The Geor­gia win might keep his cam­paign alive for a while, but it won’t secure the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for him. Both Rick San­to­rum and Mitt Rom­ney have won three times as many states as Gin­grich has. Even if Gin­grich were to pick up a few more states in the south, it still would­n’t net him the del­e­gates he needs to get the nom­i­na­tion in Tampa.

As Talk­ing Points Memo (TPM) notes, the only real­ly close con­test tonight has turned out to be Ohio, where Rick San­to­rum is still try­ing to catch up with Mitt Rom­ney after relin­quish­ing a slight lead he held for most of the evening.

After steady­ing his ship with a must-win vic­to­ry in Michigan’s pri­ma­ry last week, Mitt Rom­ney is in chop­py waters in Ohio, nar­row­ly lead­ing Rick San­to­rum with over 90% of the vote in. A loss here would revive talk that Rom­ney may be too dam­aged to lead the par­ty in the gen­er­al elec­tion despite an appar­ent burst of momen­tum in the polls in recent days.

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But the big ques­tion is about nar­ra­tive: will tonight be enough to put an end to a long pri­ma­ry slog that just about every­one agrees is hurt­ing Rom­ney who will, unless some­thing incred­i­ble hap­pens, be the Repub­li­can oppo­nent for Oba­ma in the fall? Rom­ney, whose gen­er­al poll num­bers are at almost his­tor­i­cal­ly tox­ic lev­els for a fron­trun­ning can­di­date, needs this pri­ma­ry to end — fast.

San­to­rum has arguably met or sur­passed the Super Tues­day expec­ta­tions that pun­dits and his own oper­a­tives laid out for his can­di­da­cy. He was­n’t on the bal­lot in Vir­ginia, Mass­a­chu­setts, or Ver­mont, so he did­n’t have a chance there. He is run­ning almost even with Mitt Rom­ney in Ohio, and he cap­tured three states out­right, con­tin­u­ing his win­ning streak in the mid­dle of the country.

But he still has a steep hill to climb. His biggest prob­lem is that Newt Gin­grich remains in the race. Had Gin­grich quit pri­or to Super Tues­day, San­to­rum might have picked up Geor­gia, which would have been a nice boost for his cam­paign, and he’d be well-posi­tioned to take Alaba­ma, the next state on the cal­en­dar. Instead, he’s going to have to fight Gin­grich on Gin­grich’s home turf.

If Gin­grich’s goal was to deny Mitt Rom­ney the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, he would have quit the race by now. But he fool­ish­ly thinks he can become the fron­trun­ner once again if he stays in. Bar­ring some tru­ly improb­a­ble turn of events, that sim­ply isn’t going to hap­pen. The only thing Gin­grich is going to accom­plish by remain­ing a can­di­date will be to deny Rick San­to­rum the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pull even with Rom­ney nation­al­ly — and thus give Rom­ney the nomination.