Yesterday we posted a Q&A guide to the Super Tuesday procedure. As a recap:
Super Tuesday is the first real test of a candidate’s popularity nationwide, and thus many states choose to hold their primary or caucus on that day, in order to play a part in the electability test.
Mitt Romney hopes a strong showing will all but seal the deal for him. For Rick Santorum, Super Tuesday is an opportunity to catch or overtake Romney in the delegate count, or at least take a large chunk out of Romney’s lead. For Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, sitting in distant third and fourth place, Super Tuesday, with its hundreds of delegates up for grabs, is an opportunity for both candidates to make upward moves.
Caucuses (3 states): Alaska, 27 delegates; Idaho, 32 delegates; North Dakota, 28 delegates
Primaries (7 states): Georgia, 76 delegates; Massachusetts, 41 delegates; Ohio, 66 delegates; Oklahoma, 43 delegates; Tennessee, 58 delegates; Vermont, 17 delegates; Virginia, 49 delegates
437 delegates are in play; 1,144 are needed to win the party’s nomination
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And here’s our picks of what to look out for today, and tomorrow morning, as the numbers start to trickle in and the delegate counts pile up, one way or another:
1) Who bags Ohio?
With the second largest block of votes available — and a high possiblity of the winner-takes-all allocation — Ohio is today’s vital state. Of all 50, it is one of the most politically divided and therefore a hot swing-state come the presidential race in November. As Ohio’s residents take to the ballot boxes Romney has the momentum, but four polls show him ahead within the margin of error, and at this stage the 66 votes are not certainly his to call.
Also, as an “open” primary, Ohio’s Democrats and Independent voters could take to the polls in an attempt to muddy Republican wishes. That said, the reported surge of Democrats voting for Rick Santorum in Michigan last week did not stop frontrunner Romney comfortably taking the state.
2) The Rick Santorum appeal
Come November if he is to have any feasible shot at the White House, Rick Santorum needs to start broadening his appeal among America’s vast demographics. Unsurprisingly, today’s southern states Oklahoma and Tennessee — with their Conservative politics and large evangelical populations — are inching towards Santorum.
Yet Rick’s identity as a man who lives and breathes by his faith — as well as being politically informed by it — does not actually appear to be working for him. Exit polls from earlier states show Santorum has lost the Catholic vote in every primary; despite his frequent talk about his upbringing within the Church. His recent backtracking on last week’s JFK-vomit comment may be some attempt to appease voters who are particularly sensitive about the assassinated president — the country’s first Catholic commander-in-chief.
3) Gingrich strong at home
The former House Speaker’s bumpy campaign has tailed off in recent weeks, though Newt is cruising to a victory in his home state of Georgia. A majority share of the largest single chunk of delegates available today will help the Gingrich campaign, but he will have to come at least second in states besides Oklahoma and Tennessee to hang on in the race much longer.
4) The female vote
As Sam Youngman noted, Mitt Romney has drawn on his Michigan game plan for Super Tuesday by appealing to blue-collar workers and women for their votes:
At every event, with an eye on winning women voters, Romney had his popular wife, Ann, whip up the crowds and emphasize Romney’s private-sector experience. Ann Romney called her husband a “turnaround guy.”
Rick Santorum, on the other hand, has stuck fast to social issues for some time now; campaigning on faith and contraception over the larger, immediate concern for most Americans: the economy. The success of either man with female voters is hard to predict.
5) What the turnout says of the GOP
Over at Politico, Maggie Haberman points out the race’s lingering narrative:
. . . one that began in Iowa and has continued through much of the cycle so far — the reduced number of voters in some of the primaries and caucuses. A number of analysts have suggested it’s clear evidence of an enthusiasm gap — an idea that seems true in some states but not in others.
Early in the day, Virginia appears to be one of such places. Many towns in the east coast state have reported a painfully slow start to the day and very low enthuasism among self-defining Republicans. In Ohio, too, early voting stands at a third of what it was in the 2008 primary.
Patricia Zengerle‘s report at the Huffington Post gives some idea of the ways in which the GOP candidates’ ever-intensifying rhetoric is turning off their own voters:
[Colleen Wilson] had planned to vote for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney because of his business experience and ideas for fixing the U.S. economy, but said inflammatory rhetoric at CPAC made her wonder if she could vote for any of the party’s candidates this year.“It scares me how extreme they are on social conservatism,” she said. “It wasn’t that they didn’t believe in gay marriage. It was how vicious and closed minded they were.”
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