On March 13, the Republican primary battle will come to Mississippi.
At stake will be 40 delegates; more than one-third of the 110 that will be up for grabs that day in three contests in Mississippi, Alabama and Hawaii.
There are a total of 2,286 delegates to be chosen, and a candidate needs to gain 1,144 delegate votes at the national level to win.
There is more at stake than just delegates, however. Momentum will be a theme for the day in a race that has seen numerous momentum shifts as the field has narrowed down to four candidates.
All four of the current major candidates for the Republican nomination will be on the ballot: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. Nominees for U.S. House and Senate elections will also be on the ballot. Various media outlets report different delegate count, but the Associated Press estimates Mitt Romney as holding 203 awarded delegates. Rick Santorum is in second, with 92. Gingrich and Paul are currently third and fourth, respectively.
Mississippi will have a semi-open primary, which Stephen Shaffer, political science professor, said allows for any registered voter to participate. However, those participating in the Republican primary will lose the ability to do so in the Democratic one, which has nominations for one Senate and four House races.
He said it is up to the voters, particularly Democrats, who do not have a nomination process to worry about this election cycle, to decide what is important to them: the democratic House and Senate nominations or the republican battle for the presidential nomination.
Mississippi’s primary comes one week after Super Tuesday, when over 400 delegates will be in play across 10 states.
Though it falls in the shadow of the largest day on the primary calendar, Marty Wiseman, professor and director of the Stennis Institute of Government and Community Development, said Mississippi’s primary is important because there is a strong likelihood the Republican nomination battle will still be a three-man race between Gingrich, Santorum and Romney by March 13.
“Won’t make or break any of them, but it’ll play a bigger role than normal,” he said.
Wiseman believes Ron Paul’s role in the primary will likely be minor. Robbin Mellen, political science professor, said he agrees.
“He’ll siphon off some votes from the other candidates,” he said. “But in the end, he’ll probably pick up about 10 to 15 percent of the vote.”
Wiseman said Romney’s weaknesses in the South leave room for Gingrich and Santorum to get back into the race.
“Usually by this point, one candidate’s taken a pretty big lead over the others, regardless of party, but Romney hasn’t shown much ability to blow the candidates out of the water,” he said.
Mellen said he also believes primary contests in the South will not be easy for Romney.
“I don’t think the South will be very kind for Romney,” he said. “It’s not at all his home territory.”
Wiseman said Romney’s problem in the South will be one of perception.
“Romney’s got several strikes against him in the South,” he said. “His image couldn’t be any more different than the typical Southerner. He’ll have a very difficult time capturing the laid-back appeal that Southerners know so well.”