Presidential –

(1144 delegates to win) Romney 568 (55%), Santorum 273 (27%), Gingrich 135, Ron Paul 50, Huntsman 2 (Source: WSJ)

Presidential Contest 3/24 (Romney = blue, Santorum = pink, Gingrich = red, upcoming = white)

Louisiana Primary – the Republican contest

The South is now Santorum country. This was not apparent when Newt Gingrich was sweeping the South Carolina primary back in January, but starting with the Alabama and Mississippi contests, enough of the 60-65% of the Republican vote that has consistently been “anti Romney” had begun to move to Santorum to deny Gingrich wins in those states. This movement continued before the Louisiana primary: 65% of Louisiana Republicans again voted “anti Romney”, and Rick Santorum racked up an impressive 49-27% vote over Mitt Romney (the remaining 16% of the anti-Romney vote went to Newt Gingrich). This was a broad based victory: Santorum carried 63 out of Louisiana ‘s 64 parishes (Romney carried Orleans Parish), and if you look at the elections through the prism of the urban/suburban/rural split that is prevalent in these contests, you begin to appreciate how broad Santorum’s Southern support is now.

pink = Santorum <50%, red = Santorum 50-60%, purple = Santorum 60% or more

The “urban cores” of Orleans and East Baton Rouge Parish not only have large black populations, but have a growing “garden district liberal” constituency. Accordingly, this is where Mitt Romney ran the strongest, although Santorum still defeated Romney 41-34% here. The suburban parishes of Baton Rouge and New Orleans were even more solidly in Santorum’s camp: he was preferred over Romney 47-28%. In the smaller cities and rural areas, Santorum dominated: he led Romney 52-24%.

Santorum’s dominance in the South directly impacts Newt Gingrich. He only received 16% of the vote statewide, and his performance was nearly identical in the urban areas, suburbs, and smaller cities/rural areas. This is about half of what he received in Alabama and Mississippi, and about a third of his performance in South Carolina and Georgia.

Turnout and President Obama – We have consistently noted a strong correlation between the perceived level of competition in each state and the strength of Republican turnout relative to 2008. Even though it was widely believed that Santorum would carry Louisiana, the major candidates invested some time here, and voters responded accordingly: the 186K turnout on the Republican side was 15% higher than it was in 2008. About 12% of the electorate voted early.

(REVISED 3/25 PM) We have also noticed another pattern: when President Obama is on the Democratic primary ballot and his opponent is “uncommitted”, he typically wins near unanimous percentages. With named opponents, his percentage is somewhat lower (in fact, he received less than 60% of the vote in Oklahoma against minor primary challengers). In Louisiana, the 76% he received is mildly impressive, until you realize that his support was uneven. While his coalition of white liberals and blacks enabled him to get 93% of the vote in the “urban cores” of Baton Rouge and New Orleans (included in that total was 75% of the white vote in those parishes), suburban and rural white Democrats only gave President Obama 36% of their votes. This primary vote (which, it needs to be remembered, is coming from party activists who would actually vote in a party primary) shows the extent to which President Obama is broadly unpopular among the white electorate in this state outside of Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

tan = Obama <50%, light blue = Obama 50-60%, medium blue = Obama 60-70%, dark blue = Obama 70% or more

Looking ahead/the “delegate race”

Republican primaries have become predictable affairs. For the trajectory of the race to change, Santorum has to surprise Romney in at least one of the states thought to be in the Romney column. On paper, the April 3/24 contests appear unfavorable to Santorum (6 of the 7 contests held will be in the Northeast/New England, and the remaining contest will be in Wisconsin). On April 3, Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia vote. Santorum needs to win Wisconsin to break the string of Romney victories in the Upper Midwest.

What about the delegate math? So far, Romney has a 55-27% lead over Santorum in the delegate count (as compiled by the Wall Street Journal) with 45% of the delegates chosen. For Romney to reach the magic number of 1,144, he needs to get 46% of the remaining delegates. Santorum has to get 69% of the remaining delegates to reach 1,144 by himself, although if his/Gingrich’s delegates were combined, that number would fall to 58% of remaining delegates.