Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is in position to win the Maryland, D.C. and Wisconsin primaries on Tuesday, a sweep that would help him capture the majority of the nearly 100 delegates up for grabs and move him beyond the halfway mark in his quest for the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination.
Romney’s chief rival, Rick Santorum, skipped Maryland and the District to barnstorm Wisconsin over the past week. While state political experts expect Santorum to do well enough to pick up some of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates, they say he’s unlikely to win.
Romney is leading Santorum 43 percent to 36 percent in Wisconsin, the largest prize of the day, a Public Policy poll released Monday showed. The poll found the former Massachusetts governor ahead even among the Tea Party supporters whose backing has until now helped keep Santorum’s conservative quest alive.
“You will probably be seeing six or nine of the 42 delegates going to Santorum,” Mark Graul, a GOP strategist based in Green Bay, told The Washington Examiner.
Graul said Romney was able to pull ahead of Santorum, who was once led in Wisconsin, by focusing on the economy and jobs in a state where about 7 percent of the population remains unemployed. Romney is also benefitting from high-profile endorsements from Reps. Paul Ryan and James Sensenbrenner, both of Wisconsin.
“Clearly there is a rallying around Romney that is going on right now,” Graul said.
In Maryland and District, Santorum’s delegate prospects dim even further. He’s not even on the ballot in D.C., meaning the District’s 19 delegates will likely be awarded to Romney. Maryland’s 37 delegates will be awarded by congressional district, but Romney holds a solid lead over Santorum there and is poised to dominate that delegate race.
“The Republican electorate in these places look more like the states Romney has been winning in the Northeast and less like the states that Santorum has been winning in the South,” American University political science professor Danny Hayes told The Examiner.
By Tuesday’s end, the delegate picture will be much bleaker for Santorum. Romney already has 566 delegates, compared with Santorum’s 263.
With an even wider delegate gap and three weeks until the next set of primaries, Santorum plans to turn his attention to his home state of Pennsylvania, which votes April 24. It’s considered a “must win” for Santorum, who represented the state in Congress for 16 years. Polls show Romney and Santorum running even in Pennsylvania, though Santorum insisted Monday on Fox News that he would “absolutely” win there despite the large contingent of GOP moderate voters more likely to favor Romney.
Santorum lost his 2006 bid for a third Senate term by 18 points.
“It’s easy to sweep these other states under the carpet, but Pennsylvania is going to be a much tougher test for Santorum and his long-term strategy,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.
Romney, meanwhile, is growing more confident of his own prospects. On Sunday he told a group of supporters in Wisconsin that the nominee will “probably be me.”
