It has been some days now since Super Tuesday, and I am hoping to finish reporting on all the events before tomorrow, when Kansas votes.
The other day, when I was going over my mental checklist of the states that had voted on Super Tuesday, I counted up to nine, and couldn't think of what the tenth was. Finally, it came to my attention what it was: Georgia. In some ways, this was an odd one to forget, since Georgia is the second most populous state to vote Republican in the 2008 election, and consequently, has the fourth most delegates amongst all the states this year. Georgia is a cornerstone of the Republican coalition. On the other hand, Georgia's result was considered to be somewhat foregone. Newt Gingrich was a representative from Georgia for many years, and despite his current residence in the Washington, D.C. area, it is still considered his home state. In addition, his conservative politics fit the state.
And indeed, Newt Gingrich won the state with 47% of the vote, against 26% for Mitt Romney and a little less than 20% for Rick Santorum. Newt Gingrich also won every county in the state but three, consisting of ones containing part of the Atlanta metro area and Savannah.
While the number are clear, the implications are not. Given that Georgia is Newt Gingrich's home state, maybe the fact that he couldn't capture a clear majority of the voters there is a sign that he is doing worse than he should be doing. On the other hand, in a race where many elections are won with 39% of the vote (39% seems to be a popular number this year), perhaps winning 47% of the vote in a major state like Georgia is a great victory. I have found many attempts by people to compare actual results against expected-for or wished-for results in this campaign to be full of assumptions, so I will just say that Gingrich won Georgia by a good, but not overwhelming number.