Rich Galen
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The pre-game analysis - by me - was that Romney would probably win Ohio fairly easily - by four or five percentage points. He had closed a double-digit gap over the past 10 days and I thought he was catching Super Tuesday on an upswing.

I was wrong.

I also thought that he would have a good chance of picking off Tennessee where he had been doing well among late deciders.

I was wrong. The high-level of Evangelical voters there boosted Santorum to an easy 9 percentage point win.

I thought Ron Paul might pick up his first win in North Dakota.

I was wrong. Santorum won there, too. Even though only about 10,000 people participated, Santorum got about 40% of them.

Each candidate won where he should have. Newt Gingrich won Georgia but was not competitive in any other state. At 10:30 last night, Gingrich was just shy of the 50 percent he needed to get all of Georgia's 76 delegates. If he doesn't reach that threshold they will be apportioned.

Romney won in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Virginia - where neither Santorum nor Gingrich were even on the ballot. Santorum can only wonder what his night might have been like had he had the campaign infrastructure to get his name on the ballot in the Commonwealth.


As I was typing this, Romney had jumped out to a lead in Idaho, and Alaska was still an hour and 45 minutes from closing its caucuses so we'll have to wait to see what happens there.

Tennessee was a state that geniuses like me thought Romney might have had a shot at, but the high-level of Evangelical voters there boosted Santorum to an easy 9 percentage point win.


Even if Romney ends up winning Ohio and Idaho - bringing him to wins in five of the 10 Super Tuesday states - he will not get the buzz bump that should have accompanied that because it was far more of a struggle than it was supposed to have been.

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Rich Galen
