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Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Santorum mining rural base in last-ditch bid in Wis., but draws small crowds and less attention from Fox

UPDATE: Mitt Romney won the Wisconsin primary, which "cemented his status as the almost certain Republican nominee and put new pressure on rival Rick Santorum to significantly scale back his campaign," Dan Balz and Philip Rucker report for The Washington Post. Romney "was doing better among evangelical Christians and voters who described themselves as very conservative than he did two weeks ago in neighboring Illinois, a sign he may be consolidating the party behind his candidacy." (Read more) Santorum carried the vote deemed rural by exit pollsters, but by single digits: 43 percent to 34 percent.

Rick Santorum "is counting on a small-town strategy to pull off an upset" today in Wisconsin's Republican presidential primary, but is drawing small crowds, Juana Summers of Politico reports. Catalina Camia likewise sketches Santorum's strategy for USA Today, in a short story that confirms Santorum's boast that he has carried many more counties than front-runner Mitt Romney.

Camia cites Eric Ostermeier's post today on the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog, which notes Santorum's "interesting but somewhat deceiving metric . . . which is essentially shorthand for the former Pennsylvania U.S. senator's large support outside of heavily populated urban areas." (Read more)

Romney has been leading in polls in Wisconsin, where a victory could clear his path to the nomination, but Santorum is hoping his supporters will prove to be more dedicated as the votes are counted tonight. "I’m asking small-town America, rural America and rural Wisconsin to come out and speak loudly tomorrow," he said in Oshkosh, Summers reports.

Santorum's bid appears to be undermined by a lack of attention from Fox News, the favorite TV outlet of Republicans, Walter Shapiro reports for Columbia Journalism Review: "Judging from the lopsided tenor of most of the coverage during the broadcast day on Fox News on the Monday before the Wisconsin and Maryland primaries, Mitt Romney already had been anointed as the GOP nominee. In contrast, Rick Santorum was often as invisible as a purged Soviet general airbrushed out of history by Stalin." (Read more)

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