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Ohio Primary Results

March 7, 2012 by · Comments Off on Ohio Primary Results 

Ohio Primary Results, Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney defeated former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania on Tuesday in Ohio, taking the marquee contest of the evening. The race was close throughout the night and wasn’t called until after 12:30 a.m. Eastern time, capping a successful Super Tuesday for Romney’s campaign in which he won at least five states.

The narrow result left the political world uncertain about the direction of the national race. A Romney victory, it was thought, would cement him as the clear favorite in the Republican primaries. A Santorum win would allow him to claim real momentum.

Santorum had led in the Buckeye State for the better part of the past month, but Romney began to close the gap in the final week as a result of heavy spending on television ads and a bit of momentum earned from victories in Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28. Ohio is the only Super Tuesday state where Romney and Santorum went head-to-head that is likely to be seriously contested in the fall campaign. That swing-state status raised its profile, with the state regarded as an indicator of which of the two Republican candidates would be better positioned to take the fight to President Obama in the fall.

So important was Ohio that Santorum gave his victory speech — he won in Oklahoma and Tennessee — in Steubenville. Romney stumped in the state before flying to his Boston campaign headquarters to monitor election returns.

Super Tuesday is upon us and the battle for the Republican presidential nomination is in high gear as the four leading candidates compete for more than 400 delegates in 10 states: Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska. Polls in Ohio close at 7:30 p.m. EST.

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