ANALYSIS: Santorum relies on base for N.D. win

Mitt Romney was well-prepared heading into Tuesday's North Dakota Republican presidential caucus, but the chairman of UND's Department of Political Science and Public Administration said a strong turnout of the conservative base ultimately helped Rick Santorum coast to a comfortable victory in the state.

"I think Santorum's got the enthusiasm," Mark Jendrysik said. "Romney has the money and the establishment, but he doesn't seem to have the excitement."

Santorum picked up 39.7 percent of the 11,349 votes cast Tuesday night at dozens of caucus sites across North Dakota. Ron Paul took second overall (28.1 percent), followed by Romney (23.7 percent) and Newt Gingrich (8.5 percent).

Higher turnout

Jendrysik said Tuesday's results show a changed perception of Romney in North Dakota since 2008, when he beat out John McCain, Paul and Mike Huckabee at the state's caucus.

Romney was able to get 3,490 votes that year, about 35.8 percent of the 9,743 votes. And Romney had the support of North Dakota's Republican establishment leading up to the caucus this year, he said.

Those factors led Jendrysik to predict Romney would win North Dakota on Tuesday, but he said his prediction had a major qualifier.

"I did say if the turnout went up, then all bets were off," he said.

Romney got just 2,691 votes this year compared to 3,490 votes in 2008 -- and this year's caucus vote total was 11,349, up 16.4 percent from 2008 and a new record for the event.

Mike Huckabee, the leading GOP Christian conservative candidate four years ago, placed fourth in North Dakota's caucus with 1,947 votes, or about 20 percent of the total. But Jendrysik pointed out Santorum, whose campaign appeals to many of the same voters who backed Huckabee, was able to pick up 4,510 votes for nearly 40 percent of this year's larger turnout.

"I think you had a lot of people who really like the fire breathing rhetoric from Santorum," he said. "They really like his hardcore conservative credentials. They don't see Romney as strongly conservative enough."

Local results

Local caucus volunteer Bev Clayburgh said voting at the Ramada Inn in Grand Forks drew 854 Republicans from Districts 17, 18, 42 and 43 on Tuesday.

Overall, Grand Forks voters backed Santorum with 38.5 percent of the vote, followed by Romney (27.8 percent), Paul (26.6 percent) and Gingrich (7.1 percent).

Clayburgh said the caucus has typically attracted a large turnout in Grand Forks, including about 750 voters in 2008 and more than 600 in 2004 -- a year when George W. Bush was unopposed in seeking the GOP presidential nomination.

Organizers had expected more to vote in Grand Forks this year, Clayburgh said, and they were prepared to handle 1,000 or more voters Tuesday evening.

But she said many UND students and Grand Forks Republicans planned to caucus in Fargo this year to hear Paul speak, so 100 or more potential Grand Forks voters instead were counted in Fargo.

"And Ron Paul has had a presence here among a group of students, so I'm not surprised that he did pretty well," Clayburgh said.

Santorum won the majority of votes in Districts 18 and 43 in Grand Forks. But District 17 narrowly backed Romney instead, with 99 votes compared to Santorum's 94 votes.

District 42, which includes the UND campus and surrounding neighborhoods, supported Paul with 42.9 percent of the 198 votes. Santorum and Romney tied for second in the district with 27.3 percent of the vote each.

Other candidates

Jendrysik said Paul also performed well in North Dakota's other large college community, Fargo, where he won five of the 10 Fargo area districts.

"He's definitely got appeal among students and people who want something different," he said. "He's proposing fundamental change. I think young people are likely to appreciate that."

Gingrich failed to win any of the state's 47 legislative districts and ended up with about 8.5 percent of the statewide vote. He was the only candidate to not visit North Dakota in the buildup to the caucus.

Santorum won 35 districts across the state on Tuesday.

With a larger turnout mostly made up of the conservative base backing Santorum and the youth vote backing Paul, Jendrysik said Romney was pushed back to a third-place finish just four years after easily winning in North Dakota.

"It's pretty clear that Romney lost support in the state since 2008, and the conservative and libertarian sides picked it up," he said.

"I think for Romney, it says he needs to redouble his efforts to reach the conservative base."

Caucus impact

North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Stan Stein said the caucus results show who party activists and loyalists in the state now prefer in the presidential race. But the vote did not commit any of the state's 28 delegates to the candidates.

He said up until recently, the GOP caucus results did bind the delegates to vote for candidates proportionally based on the statewide outcome. If applied to this year's results, that rule would mean that Santorum would get 11 of 28 delegates, followed by eight for Paul, seven for Romney and two for Gingrich.

But Stein said those rules caused an issue in 2008, when delegates were committed to Paul and Romney in the caucus and were forced to vote for the candidates at the national Republican convention -- even though they had dropped out of the race at that point.

"It kind of took the voice away from our delegates because they had to vote for these people," he said.

The North Dakota GOP changed the rules in 2008, and the state's caucus now does not bind any delegates to the candidates. The 28 delegates, who will be elected at the state convention in Bismarck later this month, will go to the national convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.

Stein said the delegates will be "free to vote their own conscience" in Tampa, which could be important if a new candidate is added at the national convention.

Even if the caucus does not bind delegates to the winning candidates, he said the event still "shows the people's wishes in North Dakota" and helps the party gain new grassroots supporters.

Johnson reports on local politics. Reach him at (701) 780-1105; (800) 477-6572, ext. 105; or send email to rjohnson@gfherald.com .