Thread: Mitt Romney wins Wisconsin, Maryland, D.C. primaries

Mitt Romney wins Wisconsin, Maryland, D.C. primaries

By David A. Fahrenthold and Philip Rucker, Updated: Tuesday, April 3, 7:00 PM

Mitt Romney has won all three of Tuesday’s Republican primaries, according to exit polls and early results--a sweep of Wisconsin, Maryland and the District that moves Romney closer to ending the GOP nominating contest.

All three wins were expected. Maryland and the District traditionally choose moderate Republicans over social conservatives like Romney’s rival, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. In Wisconsin, Romney had initially trailed, but then roared back to overtake Santorum with the help of heavy advertising and key endorsements from Republican leaders.

But the victories are still important for Romney, since they could give him at least 95 delegates to the GOP’s convention in Tampa this summer. Romney remains hundreds away from the threshold needed to secure the nomination, 1,144 delegates. But he is building such a large lead that Santorum has little hope of catching up.

Romney has won 18 of the 30 states that have held nominating contests, plus the District. He now seems poised for a string of victories, as moderate states across the Northeast hold primaries later this month. Santorum’s best hope for an April win looks to be his home state of Pennsylvania, where recent polls have shown Romney trailing behind him--but gaining fast.

Speaking to supporters in Milwaukee, Romney celebrated “a great victory tonight.” He spent most of his speech focused on President Obama, not his GOP rivals. He said Obama failed to understand that free enterprise, not government, was the heart of America’s historic prosperity: “Under Barack Obama, America hasn’t been working.”

“Washington has to become an ally of business, not the opposition of business,” Romney said. “Out-of-touch liberals like Barack Obama say they want a strong economy, but...they really don’t like businesses very much. But the economy is simply the product of all the nation’s businesses added together. So it’s like saying you love omelets but don’t like eggs.”

Santorum, addressing supporters in Mars, Pa., said he would continue in the race--looking ahead to the primary in his home state on April 24. “Pennsylvania and half the other people in this country have yet to be heard. And we’re going to go out and campaign across this nation to make sure their voices are heard.”

Santorum made a familiar pitch: that Romney is too moderate to succeed as a Republican nominee, saying it was a tactic the party had tried against previous Democratic incumbents. It never worked, he said.

“We don’t win by moving to the middle,” Santorum said. “We win by getting people in the middle to move to us.”

Exit polls show that Tuesday’s contests drew a broader slice of the Republican electorate--making a contrast with earlier primaries in states dominated by very conservative voters.

For instance, fewer than four in 10 Republican voters in Wisconsin and Maryland identify as evangelical Christians in preliminary exit poll results. That’s far below the average across all contests this year, which was 51 percent evangelical voters.

Mitt Romney wins Wisconsin, Maryland, D.C. primaries - The Washington Post

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