Romney Strikes Back

To no one's surprise, Mitt Romney easily won Arizona (47-27). Far more interesting is that he also won Michigan. Mr. Romney bested Mr. Santorum in Michigan by a little over 30,000 votes or around 3% (41-38). As I predicted yesterday, a low turnout benefited Mr. Romney. Whether Democrat chicanery added anything is impossible to tell at this point.


The delegate split is 50-50 as Mr. Romney has taken seven congressional districts for 14 delegates and Mr. Santorum has taken seven congressional districts for 14 delegates. Mr. Romney's domination of the Detroit area bagged him the majority of delegates, despite Mr. Santorum taking a larger percentage of the geography of Michigan. The last two delegates are split even between the two men as they both topped the 15% vote threshold.

Looking at things as a whole, Mr. Romney has a hard total of 117 delegates with another 32 as soft additions from the caucuses. Mr. Santorum has 18 hard delegates but an additional soft 40 from the caucuses. Either way, Mr. Romney is the solid front runner at the moment and he should stem the narrative that he's in trouble for the moment. That might change depending on what happens on Super Tuesday but that's a good week away.

BTW, Wyoming wraps up their county caucuses today and it looks as though Mr. Romney is going to win that straw poll. However, the delegate allocation is quite different in that state so I'll cover Wyoming in a separate post.