The 2012 Republican presidential primaries are the selection processes in which voters of the Republican Party will choose their nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. There are 2,286 delegates to be chosen.[3] A candidate must accumulate 1,144 delegate votes at the Republican National Convention to win.[4] It is the first presidential primary affected by a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited fundraising for candidates through super PACs.
The primary contest began in 2011 with a fairly wide field. Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, had been preparing to run for president ever since the 2008 election [5] and the media narrative became: "who would be the anti-Romney candidate?"[6]
Several candidates rose in the polls one after another during the year.
But after the two first contests (Iowa and New Hampshire), the field
was down to four candidates by March 2012: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, former Governor Mitt Romney and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum.
Santorum had been running a one-state campaign in Iowa, and he won
the state with a handful of votes over Romney, who won New Hampshire and
one congressional district in South Carolina with the rest of South
Carolina's districts going to Gingrich. Three different Republican
candidates won the first three contests (Iowa, New Hampshire and South
Carolina). Santorum took his campaign national and carried four more
states while Romney carried seven before Super Tuesday.
Super Tuesday
primaries took place on March 6. With ten states voting and 419
delegates being allocated, it had only about half the potential impact
of its 2008 predecessor. Romney won six states and Santorum won three,
while Gingrich won his home state of Georgia. In Virginia, where only Romney and Paul were on the ballot, Paul won a congressional district.
After Super Tuesday, Romney maintained his edge in the delegate count. Santorum won the Kansas caucuses and the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, while Romney won Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Illinois[7] and three Pacific territories.
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