Mitt Romney, winner. He won five of the ten contests—the primaries in Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia and (whew! close call) Ohio and the caucuses in Idaho—and this is written awaiting the results of the Alaska caucuses which perhaps he might win. He was the big, big winner in delegates, winning (according to the Real Clear Politics count, sans Alaska) 181 delegates to 71 for Rick Santorum, 54 for Newt Gingrich and 14 for Ron Paul. By this count he more than doubled his number of delegates on a single day of voting. This kind of delegate lead, amassed by Barack Obama in the single month of February 2008, enabled him to defeat Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she won more votes and more delegates in primaries than Obama did. Romney was a winner too because he won the crucial contest, Ohio, if only by a 38%-37% margin, reminiscent of his 41%-38% margin in demographically and personally slightly more favorable Michigan a week before. Once again, as he did in 2008 when he was cast as a hard-shell conservative and as he has earlier this year when he was cast as a squish moderate, he won his biggest percentage margins in affluent areas. As I’ve argued, Romney’s appeal to high-income, high-education suburban voters could be an asset in the general election; Republicans did pretty well in holding non-college whites even in 2008 (John McCain carried them 58%-40%), but they have been losing ground among college-graduate whites in major non-Southern metro areas since the middle 1990s and a nominee with appeal to that demographic might be able to turn that around and to win states which George H. W. Bush carried in 1988 but where Republican presidential candidates have been at a disadvantage ever since.