Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the Wisconsin GOP primary Tuesday, and experts predict it is unlikely for any other candidate to win the Republican nomination.
Romney received 44.1 percent of the vote, closely followed by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum with 36.9 percent. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich lagged far behind, with Paul receiving 11.2 percent and Gingrich receiving 5.8 percent.
On the same night, Romney also won Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area. The three wins put Romney’s delegate total at 658, past the halfway mark for total delegates needed to receive the nomination.
UW political science professor Dennis Dresang said it was a bit too early to call the race for Romney but that any other candidate receiving enough delegates would be unlikely.
“Romney has political momentum, but he doesn’t have the delegates yet,” Dresang said. “The safest thing to say is it’s unlikely any other candidate is going to reach the 1,444 delegates needed. The only other possibility besides Romney getting to that level is nobody getting to that level.”
In the case of no candidate reaching the total numbers of delegates needed, Dresang said a brokered convention, or a reshuffling and trading of delegates, would be triggered and a winner would be chosen.
Dresang said if Gingrich dropped out of the race and enough votes from his camps swung over to Santorum’s, a convention could be held.
Santorum is far behind in delegate count, but with his home state of Pennsylvania and Texas coming up, Dresang said it is still a possibility for him to catch up.
More than one million of the state’s 4.3 million eligible voters turned out for the election. The turnout of 25 percent of the state is lower than the Government Accountability Board’s prediction of 35 percent released last week.
Dresang said while turnout was high compared to other states, it has been a relatively slow year across the nation with less people turning out than in the 2008 Democratic primary.
Following the results, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brad Courtney released a statement thanking the presidential nominees for spending time in the state and complimented the voters of Wisconsin on its highest turnout rate in a presidential primary since 1980.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also released a statement regarding the primary, congratulating Romney on his victory and saying the vote shows Wisconsin understands the dangers of “big government policies” that “the state endured for years at the hand of Democrats in Madison.”
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin also filed a complaint with the GAB election night, alleging election bribery took place in Waukesha, where GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, were handing out sandwiches in exchange for votes in the primary.
According to the complaint, Romney and Ryan were handing out sandwiches “in exchange for votes in a video posted on YouTube.”
“So bring your friends to the polls, get out and vote and if you want another sandwich, there are more back there,” Romney said in the video.
The GAB has yet to respond to the complaint.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
