Live Blogging (and Tweeting) the Arizona and Michigan Returns

I am the Swing State Voter

I will be live blogging and tweeting throughout the night during the Arizona and Michigan returns. This will be best read from the bottom up. I will update from the top, pushing older comments down. And I will put timestamps in as often as possible.

10:18- CNN waited until Santorum started getting boring before interrupting. They have now called it for Romney as well! WOOHOO! 
41% Romney
37% Santorum
12% Paul
7% Gingrich
There will still be some questions about delegates later because they follow the congressional districts.

10:14- Looks like NBC is calling it first- for Romney in Michigan! (They interrupted Santorum speech to do it.) I wonder if CNN is just being polite to Santorum and waiting a few minutes to call it themselves? Or are they just not ready yet?

10:05- just to build on my question about how many Democrats voted for Santorum versus Catholics-

Again, basic math of 100
9 Democrats voted total, of which 4.77 voted for Santorum.
22 Republicans voted for Santorum.
And 10 Independents.
That's not a good sign.
It really is looking like it will come down to about 4-5% difference in who wins. That 9% may actually make a difference, but not enough of one!


9:58- Sounds like we may be minutes away from Michigan getting called for Romney!
Meanwhile- the exit polls on religion in Michigan.

Again using very basic math on 100 people.
39 voters were white evangelicals, of which 19.5 voted for Santorum.
61 were not white evangelicals (the question not being answered if this is where Catholics would identify, but we'll assume that they would)- and 26 of them voted with Romney, and 18 for Santorum. Again, it does not look like Santorum attracted the conservative Catholic vote he was angling for.

9:50- Food for thought- something to follow up on later tonight. Rumors are coming in that Santorum lost the Catholic vote in both AZ and MI. If it is true that more Catholics voted for Romney, and Santorum's robocall strategy really has brought out several thousand Democrats, that means Santorum may very well have more Dems voting for him than his own target audience.


9:40- The question has been asked multiple times over the last few days what it means if Romney loses Michigan. I want to address that question right now while we still don't know which way MI will go.
It will mean nothing. It will be a little bee sting to the campaign, and give talking heads something to talk about. Because what would they talk about if he won? The only reason it is an issue at all is because Gingrich is trying to make it one. Gingrich who is so far behind in most states that he's hanging out in Georgia, his home state, speaking at the college he used to teach at. Georgia with its 76 proportional delegates. It's Gingrich's only chance to catch up with Santorum. He is the one making the claims that it is an insult not to win your home state, because it is his home state that is his last chance to win something. And he knows both Santorum and Romney have fierce battles in their home states.
But does it matter? No. No matter who wins- Santorum or Romney- it is going to be very, very close, and it is proportional. There is a good chance that the winner will only walk away with 3 more delegates than the other one. And Romney just won 29 delegates in AZ tonight. Just as a reminder, Gingrich only has 35 delegates total.
So if Romney doesn't win, what happens is that Gingrich has something to harp on for one week. And that is pretty much it.

9:25- For all those people who claim that Romney won Arizona because it is so heavily Mormon, please see the Exit/Entrance polls at CNN.

Let's use basic math and pretend only 100 people voted.
That would mean-
14.8 Protestants voted for Romney, 12.2 voted for Santorum
7.38 Catholics voted for Romney, 6.3 voted for Santorum
12.74 Mormons voted for Romney, 2.8 voted for Santorum
6.12 "other Christians" voted for Romney, 6.66 voted for Santorum

In other words, Romney did not win because of the Mormon vote. 28.3 of the 41 votes (so, more than half) were not Mormon. He would have won without those votes!



9:20- According to The Fix Twitter feed- Santorum is winning self identified Democrats in Michigan by a 3-1 margin over Romney and Paul, according to exits.

9:03- Arizona is a winner-take-all state. That brings Romney up to 135 delegates.

9:02- Michigan update now has Romney at 41% and Santorum at 39%. Still only 19% of the votes in. This is going to be a very long night. (Oh and Ron Paul at 11% and Gingrich with 6%!!!)

9:01- All polls closed in AZ and MI. And as the polls close, CNN calls it for Romney in Arizona with 44%, Santorum 27%, Gingrich 16%, Paul 11%.

9:00- With 14% of the votes in from Michigan: Santorum 40%, Romney 39%, Paul 11%, Gingrich 7%.

8:30-  It is already a nail-biter in Michigan. Romney was leading for the past hour (1% reporting), and now it is Santorum ahead by about 600 votes (6% reporting).


6:30- CNN is already saying that Michigan will be very close, and to expect it to be a very late night. I'm prepared!

In every primary everywhere there are always rumors that the other party has been infiltrating the polls to cast protest votes. When I worked at the South Carolina campaign office we had a lot of very concerned citizens calling in to say they had "seen Democrats" at the polls. Whether or not that sort of thing is ever true or something to be worried about, we'll never really know. But today we have a very different story with the Santorum campaign actually sending out robocalls to Democrats encouraging them to come out and vote for Santorum in protest of Romney. These aren't even PAC robocalls- they are actually from the real campaign. That is just a crazy, gutsy move. CNN is already showing that 10% of voters in Michigan have been Democrats today. (That is not the same as saying 10% of Democrats voted for Santorum, but you know that won't stop the crazies from saying it that way later.)