Rick Santorum won the North Dakota caucus on Super Tuesday, edging out GOP rivals Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Mitt Romney.
Despite its small delegate size, North Dakota was hotly contested. With 78% of polling stations reporting, Santorum notched 40% of the vote to Paul’s 27%. Romney brought in 25% of the vote and Gingrich trailed badly with 8%.
The North Dakota only rewards 28 delegates.
Paul has done well in other caucus states including Maine and Iowa. As of the time that the North Dakota results were announced, Paul remained the only Republican candidate who hadn’t won a state.
According to the New York Times Santorum’s win in North Dakota — after winning already in Tennessee and Oklahoma — adds to the sense of momentum for a campaign that stumbled in Michigan last week.
Santorum is expected to be strong in the Rust Belt states close to Pennsylvania, where he served as a member of Congress. And early on Tuesday, he proved that he can win in southern states. Victories in the caucus states of North Dakota and Idaho would give Santorum bragging rights in the northwest part of the country as well. In remarks before all the votes were counted, Santorum bragged about his showing.
"We've won in the Midwest, the West and the South and we're ready to win across this country," Santorum told supporters at his Super Tuesday base in Steubenville, Ohio.
Santorum is clearly showing he has national appeal among conservatives.
In caucus states, Paul had been using a “Moneyball” strategy, reports PolicyMic editor Jordan Wolf: "Paul, by going to Idaho and North Dakota, is the GOP's equivalent of Billy Bean trying to replace his star line up after losing them all to other big budget teams.
“In one of the opening scenes of the movie based Jon Lewis' Moneyball, Brad Pitt listens to his advisers talk about how to replace Jason Giambi. What he finds out though, after meeting Jonah Hill's character — Yale educated Peter Brand — is that he should be thinking not about how to replace human beings on a roster, but how to make up stats in abstraction. Paul has made the same realization and is playing Moneyball in the GOP primary. He's going for delegates, the people who actually matter, rather than chasing percentage points in the nightly recaps of the major networks."
Paul is now zero for 128 in career state primary/ caucus wins.
Romney did spend some time campaigning and promoting his energy policies in North Dakota on Friday. As the state with the nation's lowest unemployment rate, Romney shied away from touting his economic credentials and directed the bulk of his attacks against President Barack Obama's energy record. The Romney campaign had already made three trips to North Dakota in as many weeks to try to lock-up the nomination. Romney had been endorsed by many of the state's most prominent Republicans.
According to Mark Jendrysik, a political science professor at the University of North Dakota, the state will be pivotal for the Super Tuesday winner. "Every vote and delegate seems to count, so it might be worth it to invest in North Dakota. Obama gained a lot of credibility by winning a bunch of caucuses that Hillary's people ignored."
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
