Rick Santorum has won the Minnesota caucuses and the nonbinding
Missouri primary. At this writing it looks like he may win the
Colorado caucuses, too, but even if Mitt Romney pulls out a win
there, this is Santorum’s night.
As
noted here at the time, Santorum was campaigning in
Missouri and Minnesota (and Colorado) when Romney and Newt Gingrich
were still slugging it out in Florida. The strategy paid off;
Santorum was in these states significantly more than his rivals,
and Nate Silver
notes some empirical evidence that spending more time in a
state helps a candidate outperform his poll numbers.
While tonight’s contests don’t push Santorum very far forward in
the delegate count, he will undoubtedly get a fundraising boost out
his victories; the question is how far it can take him. When the
Conservative Political Action Conference convenes in Washington
later this week — with Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich all slated
to speak — you can bet that activists will be conferring at the
bars in and around the Marriott Wardman Park to puzzle over that
question. As it always is during a hotly contested primary, this
should be an interesting CPAC indeed.
