It’ll be a relieved Mitt Romney and a deflated Rick Santorum who head to Ohio ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday primaries. Romney scored an impressive 21-point victory in Arizona — exceeding the already high expectations for him there. This win provides him with a significant boost in the delegate count — a factor that becomes more important the longer the race drags on — as Arizona assigns all of its 29 delegates to the winner. But more important for Romney was the three-point margin he secured over Santorum in Michigan.
Winning Michigan may not help Romney extend his lead in delegates — he and Santorum might well come away with 15 each from the state — but his victory there was crucial in setting the media narrative in the run-up to Super Tuesday. It has provided Romney with some much-needed positive headlines: the Wall Street Journal, somewhat self-fulfillingly, proclaims ‘Romney Regains Momentum’. It is precisely such headlines that fuel this momentum, more than the vote-count itself. The win also denied Santorum a bump in states like Ohio and Georgia, making his path to the nomination much more tricky.
So what’ll happen next? It’d be easy to say that last night’s victories put Romney within reach of the nomination; that his real focus is now on Obama. But many said that after his wins in New Hampshire and Florida, only for first Newt Gingrich and then Rick Santorum to shake things up. Either could still do the same again next Tuesday.
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