page_title: 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries
section_title: Early states (January to March)
hierarchical_section_title: 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries / Timeline of the race / Early states (January to March)
caption_attribution_description: Rick Perry presidential candidate on campaign trail interacting with voters in Iowa. This is at the Iowa State Fair.
context_page_description: The 2012 Republican presidential primaries were the selection processes in which voters of the Republican Party elected state delegations to the Republican National Convention. The national convention then selected its nominee to run for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. There were 2,286 delegates chosen, and a candidate needed to accumulate 1,144 delegate votes at the convention to win the nomination. The caucuses allocated delegates to the respective state delegations to the national convention, but the actual election of the delegates were, many times, at a later date. Delegates were elected in different ways that vary from state to state. They could be elected at local conventions, selected from slates submitted by the candidates, selected at committee meetings, or elected directly at the caucuses and primaries.
  The primary contest began in 2011 with a fairly wide field. Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and the runner-up in the 2008 primaries, had been preparing to run for president ever since the 2008 election, and was from early on the favorite to win the nomination.
context_section_description: In 2012 there were 13 state contests before Super Tuesday, seven caucuses and 5 primaries. Missouri had a nonbinding straw poll in the form of a primary. Santorum spent months in Iowa, traveling to all 99 counties and holding some 381 town hall meetings. This one state campaign succeeded when he tied with Romney in the Iowa Caucuses on January 3. This first in the nation caucus propelled him into a national campaign while it ended Michele Bachmann's campaign. On the night of the caucuses, Romney was reported the winner of Iowa by only eight votes over Santorum, but after the results were certified, Santorum was declared the winner, beating Romney by 34 votes, despite the results from 8 districts being lost. Newt Gingrich said after Iowa that his positive campaign had been a weakness, and had allowed his rivals to gain the upper hand through negative attacks paid by super PACs supporting them.
  Mitt Romney easily won the next contest, New Hampshire, his win seen as a given. Romney had persistently shown popularity in that state, but rivals were intensely fighting for a second-place finish there. Jon Huntsman, Jr., a moderate, had staked his candidacy on New Hampshire and invested heavily in at least a strong second place showing, but after 150 campaign events in the state he ended third after Paul. Both he and Rick Perry dropped out of the race shortly before voting day in South Carolina and the two delegates allocated to Huntsman became unbound.
  Romney was expected to virtually clinch the nomination with a win in South Carolina, but Gingrich, from neighboring Georgia, waged an aggressive and successful campaign winning all but one of the state's congressional districts. The Gingrich victory in South Carolina, together with two strong debate performances, gave him a second surge, opening the race to a longer and more unpredictable campaign.
  Romney did regain some of his momentum in the next two weeks and won the Florida primary and the Nevada caucuses. However, the race shifted again on February 7, when Santorum swept all three Midwestern states voting that day. By doing so he made a case for himself as the 'Not-Romney' candidate and disrupted Romney's narrative as the unstoppable frontrunner.
  Following his victories on February 7, Santorum received a huge boost in momentum as conservatives seeking an alternative to Romney began leaving Gingrich for Santorum. Numerous polls taken after Santorum's victories showed him either leading Romney nationally or close behind. To regain momentum Romney shelved his "no straw polls" policy and actively campaigned to win the CPAC straw poll, which he won with 38 percent to Santorum's 31 percent. He also campaigned in Maine, beating Ron Paul by only three percentage points.
  Regaining momentum Romney won the remaining four states. The candidates campaigned heavily in Michigan, and even though Romney won the state vote, he won only 7 out of 14 congressional districts, the rest going to Santorum. The allocation of two at-large delegates in the state was before the election was reported to be given proportionally. After the election Michigan GOP officials announced there had been an error in the memo published and that the two delegates would be given to the winner, sparking accusations of Romney rigging the results from Santorum's team. After thirteen contests the GOP field for the presidential nomination was still wide open.
  The numbers for delegates, states, and districts won in these tables include results from local conventions held in states which did not allocate their delegates at the precinct caucuses or primary election. These conventions were generally held on dates later than the table indicates.
  † The state did not allocate any delegates at its primary election, they were elected later.
caption: Rick Perry suspended his campaign on January 19 after getting fifth place in Iowa and last in New Hampshire.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot SD880 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2011:08:14 22:14:54", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2318", "Image XPKeywords": "[80, 0, 101, 0, 114, 0, 114, 0, 121, 0, 32, 0, 97, 0, 116, 0, 32, 0, 73, 0, 111, 0, 119, 0, 97, 0, 32, 0, 83, 0, 116, 0, 97, 0, 116, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, 70, 0, 97, 0, 105, 0, 114, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7606", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6070", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "29/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:08:14 22:14:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:08:14 22:14:54", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "133/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "81/16", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "81/16", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "9999/500", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2418", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3648", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2736", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "7394", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "6498000/241", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "4873500/181", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "57/32", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4162"}