Voters of the Republican Party elected state delegations to the 2012 Republican National Convention in presidential primaries. 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, the 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. However, he lacked support from the party's conservative wing and the media narrative soon revolved around speculation on a conservative or "anti-Romney" candidate who would challenge Romney in the primaries. Several candidates rose in the polls throughout the year. However, the field was down to four candidates by February 2012: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Representative Ron Paul, former Governor Romney and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. It was the first presidential primary to be affected by a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates through super PACs.
Three different candidates won the first three contests. Santorum, who had been running a one-state campaign in Iowa, narrowly won in that state's caucuses by a handful of votes over Romney (who was thought to have won the caucuses before a recount). Romney won New Hampshire, but lost South Carolina to Gingrich. From there, Romney regained his momentum by winning the crucial state of Florida, while Santorum took his campaign national and carried three more states before Super Tuesday, while Romney carried seven states.
Super Tuesday primaries took place on March 6. With ten states voting and 391 delegates being allocated, it had less than half the potential impact of its 2008 predecessor. Romney carried six states and Santorum three, while Gingrich won his home state of Georgia. Twelve more events were held in March, including all of the territorial contests and the first local conventions that allocated delegates (Wyoming's county conventions). Santorum won Kansas and three Southern primaries, but was unable to make any significant gains on Romney, who maintained a solid lead over all other contenders after securing more than half of the delegates allocated in the month of March.
Santorum suspended his campaign on April 10, a week after losing Wisconsin and two other primaries to Romney. Gingrich followed suit on May 2, after the Republican National Committee (RNC) declared Romney the presumptive nominee on April 25 and put its resources behind him. On May 14, Paul announced that he would suspend funding the remaining primary contests and devote his resources to winning delegates at state conventions. He then won majorities in delegations of three states whose non-binding primaries had been in favor of other candidates. On May 29, Romney reached the nominating threshold of 1,144 delegates by most projected counts following his primary win in Texas and was congratulated by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus for "securing the delegates needed to be our party's official nominee at our convention in Tampa." With his subsequent victories in California and several smaller states, Romney surpassed a majority of bound delegates on June 5.
Romney chose congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, but they went on to lose the general election to incumbent President Barack Obama. Ryan later went on to serve a term as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and Romney was elected to the U.S. Senate from Utah in 2018.
As of 2024, these are the most recent Republican Party presidential primaries where Donald Trump didn't run in, and also the most recent primary in which Trump wasn’t chosen as the nominee.
Candidates
Did not withdraw
On May 14, 2012, Paul announced that he would no longer actively campaign in states that have not held primaries, but rather focus on a strategy to secure delegates before the convention. Leading up to the convention, Ron Paul won bound pluralities of the official delegations from the states of Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, and Oregon (but not the Virgin Islands, despite winning the popular vote there). Due to disputes these were reduced to Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada; however, he additionally had nomination-from-the-floor-pluralities in the states of Oregon and Alaska, plus the Virgin Islands. Although he was not named the 2012 Republican nominee, he did not officially end his campaign or endorse nominee Mitt Romney for president. At the convention, Ron Paul received second place with 8% of the delegates.
Withdrew after the primaries
Karger was not invited to any of the televised debates, but participated in the December WePolls.com online debate along with Gary Johnson and Buddy Roemer. He came in 4th place with 1,893 votes in Puerto Rico, 1,180 votes in Michigan, 10 votes in Iowa, 345 votes in New Hampshire, 377 votes in Maryland, 6,481 votes in his home state of California, and 545 votes in Utah, amounting up to a total of 10,831 votes. He withdrew following a 5th-place finish in the Utah primary, which was the final primary of the 2012 cycle. Karger received no delegate votes at the convention.
Withdrew during the primaries
The following individuals participated in at least two presidential debates. They withdrew or suspended their campaigns at some point after the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2012. They are listed in order of exit, starting with the most recent.
Declined to seek nomination
- Delegate Hard Count: This only included bound delegates that had to vote for a candidate even if they supported another candidate.
- Delegate Soft Count: This only included delegates allocated at the primaries and unallocated delegates that were elected at their local conventions or committees. It did not include any projections on future local conventions or the 117 unbound RNC delegates that were not a part of the primary election process. A breakdown of this historical count is found in the Primary Schedule below.
- Plurality: A candidate secured a delegation when he has the highest number of delegates that could vote for him on the first ballot in the nomination at the National Convention. According to RNC rules it took plurality in five delegations to be on the first ballot at the National Convention, and it took 1,144 delegates at the roll call of the ballots to become the Republican nominee.
Timeline of the race
The primary contests took place from January 3 to July 14 and elected and allocated 2,286 voting delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention in the week of August 27. To become the Republican Party's nominee for the 2012 presidential election a candidate needed a majority of 1,144 delegates to vote for him and plurality in five state delegations. The 2012 race was significantly different from earlier races. Many states switched from their old winner-take-all allocation to proportional allocation. Many remaining winner-take-all states allocated delegates to both the winner of each congressional district and the winner of the state. The change was made to prolong the race, giving lesser known candidates a chance and making it harder for a frontrunner to secure the majority early. It was also hoped that this change in the election system would energize the base of the party.
Most of the candidates started their campaigns in mid-2011, but after the first two primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, only four well-funded campaigns (Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul) remained for the Republican Party nomination; Gary Johnson had withdrawn to run on the Libertarian ticket, and Buddy Roemer sought the American Elect nomination. At the beginning of May, Gingrich and Santorum suspended their campaigns; Romney was widely reported as the presumptive nominee, with Paul the only other major candidate running an active campaign.
Beginning (2011)
The 2008 Republican National Convention decided that the 2012 primary schedule generally would be subject to the same rules as the 2008 delegate selection contests, but on August 6, 2010, the Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted new rules for the timing of elections, with 103 votes in favor out of 144. Under this plan, allocation of delegates to the national convention were to be divided into three periods:
- February 1 – March 5, 2012: Contests of traditional early states Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina,
- March 6–31, 2012: Contests that proportionally allocate delegates,
- April 1, 2012, and onward: All other contests including winner-take-all elections.
Several states, most notably Florida, scheduled their allocating contests earlier than prescribed, and in response every traditional early state except Nevada pushed their contests back into January. As a result of their violation of RNC rules, these states were penalized with a loss of half their delegates, including voting right for RNC delegates. Despite having early caucuses, Iowa, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri were not penalized because their contests did not allocate national delegates.
The start of the 2012 Republican race for president was shaped by the 13 presidential debates of 2011, which began on May 5. Gary Johnson and Buddy Roemer, both former Governors, were left out of most of the debates, leading to complaints of bias. On December 28, 2011, Johnson withdrew to seek the Libertarian Party nomination and on February 23, 2012, Roemer withdrew to seek the Reform Party and the Americans Elect nomination.
Two candidates from the 2008 presidential primaries, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, ran again in the 2012 primary campaign. Mitt Romney was the early frontrunner, and he maintained a careful, strategic campaign that centered on being an establishment candidate. In the summer of 2011, Romney had a lead in polls and the support of much of the Republican leadership and electorate. However, his lead over the Republican field was precarious, and the entry of new candidates drew considerable media attention. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann started her campaign in June and surged in the polls after winning the Ames, Iowa, straw poll in August, knocking out former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, who both withdrew after their poor showings in the non-binding Straw Poll failed to revive their struggling campaigns. Bachmann's momentum was short-lived. The same day that the Ames Straw Poll was being held, Texas Governor Rick Perry was drafted by strong national Republican support. He performed strongly in polls, immediately becoming a serious contender, and soon displaced Bachmann as Romney's major opponent. Perry in turn lost the momentum following poor performances in the September debates, and the third major opponent to Romney's lead, Herman Cain, surged after the sixth debate on September 22. In November, Cain's viability as a candidate was seriously jeopardized after several allegations of sexual harassment surfaced in the media. Although Cain denied the allegations, the fallout from the controversy forced him to suspend his campaign on December 3, 2011.
In November, as Herman Cain's campaign was stumbling, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich rose in the polls and asserted himself as the fourth major opponent to Romney. Gingrich had come back from serious staff problems in his campaign just weeks after he had entered the race in May that had seemingly derailed his campaign for the nomination. But in the weeks before the Iowa caucus, Gingrich's new-found lead began to quickly evaporate as super PACs sympathetic to Mitt Romney and others spent over $4.4 million in negative advertising targeting the former Speaker. With Gingrich's support faltering, Ron Paul surged to the lead in Iowa. In the final weeks of 2011, Santorum positioned himself as the prime opposition to Romney with his staunch socially conservative views.
On the eve of the January 3, 2012 Iowa Caucus, the first real contest of the primary season, Paul, Santorum and Romney were all viewed as possible winners.
Early states (January to March)
- Six delegations had primary elections allocating 174 delegates
- Seven delegations had caucuses starting the process of electing 182 unallocated delegates
In 2012, there were 13 state contests before Super Tuesday, seven caucuses and five 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 eight 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 seven 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 13 contests, the GOP field for the presidential nomination was still wide open.