Biggest surprise of this year's Republican primary season

[indulgence]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Penelope]

Colorado going 40% for Santorum was probably the biggest surprise. I voted Iowa and Virgin Islands as the other two.

[Peeperkorn]

Iowa.

[WhyteRain]

How did Gingrich's surprise win in SC not make the list?

[Niemeyerite]

ND, MN and CO, but also AL, MS and PR.

[Supersonic]

Colorado absolutely.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

ND, MN and CO, but also AL, MS and PR.

How was PR surprising?

Anyway, I voted IA, CO, and AL.

[tmthforu94]

How did Gingrich's surprise win in SC not make the list?

...because everyone saw it coming days before the primary took place. I don't think anyone was expecting someone other than Gingrich to win - it was just a matter of if he'd hit 40% or not.

[Niemeyerite]

ND, MN and CO, but also AL, MS and PR.

How was PR surprising?

Anyway, I voted IA, CO, and AL.

Everyone predicted Romney would win there, by 10-15 points. He got 85%!

[NVGonzalez]

CO MN and MO.

I was also stunned that Romney got nominated.

[Maxwell]

Minnesota, Iowa, and, maybe it was just me, but I thought, surely, Alaska was going to Paul.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

How did Gingrich's surprise win in SC not make the list?

It wasn't a surprise.  The biggest southern surprise was only Romney and Paul making the Virginia ballot.

[argentarius]

Colorado, we all though Romney was gonna win. Apart from those who bought into polling momentum massively. Then Virginia, Ron Paul getting 40%? That was exciting. Then Minnesota, Romney not even coming second was great.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Iowa, Colorado, and probably Mississippi. That day with those Southern primaries really upset me. I thought for sure Santorum and Gingrich would split the far-right votes enough to give Romney at least one win and seal the deal.

[Lincoln Republican]

Santorum saying he'd beat Romney if Gingrich dropped out.

[Holmes]

Santorum saying he'd beat Romney if Gingrich dropped out.

A candidate saying he is capable of winning. What a surprise.

[Frodo]

Rick Santorum rising from an asterisk to becoming the greatest obstacle to Mitt Romney's quest for the nomination.  

[Mr. Morden]

Stephen Colbert's Herman Cain's 1% in South Carolina.

[indulgence]

Why exactly did Santorum win Colorado? It still makes no sense.

[Supersonic]

Why exactly did Santorum win Colorado? It still makes no sense.

There's a theory that after Mitt won big in Nevada, his supporters thought he had all but wrapped up the nomination and thus didn't come out in force for the Minnesota and Colorado contests. Gingrich has been toppled in Florida and Santorum seemed irrelevant so long after Iowa.

Also, the Colorado and Minnesota GOP base is far more socially conservative than their states as a whole, hence why in 2008 Romney won them, as at the time he was pandering to the socon right. In 2012, Mitt was, bar Huntsman, the socially moderate candidate.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

For me, it was Iowa. The day of the Caucus I was calling it for either Romney or Paul. Damn you Drudge Report. Damn you.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

For me, it was Iowa. The day of the Caucus I was calling it for either Romney or Paul. Damn you Drudge Report. Damn you.

Also, no one thought it would come down to six votes and two old women named Edith and Carolyn.

What a night.

[Mr. Morden]

Why exactly did Santorum win Colorado? It still makes no sense.

Because Romney didn't outspend Santorum by an enormous margin there, like he did in other states.  At that stage in the campaign, Romney was basically ignoring the post-Nevada caucus states, in the hopes that the media would then ignore them too.  But that didn't work out too well, so he had to readjust after Santorum's Feb. 7 victories.

[Lincoln Republican]

Santorum saying he'd beat Romney if Gingrich dropped out.

A candidate saying he is capable of winning. What a surprise.

You missed the point, the point being that Gingrich's support would be split between Romney, Santorum, Paul, not going en masse to Santorum.

[WhyteRain]

The BIGGEST surprise is that Romney got the nomination at all.

Famed pollster Dick Morris in a book published in early-2011 said that Romney had "no chance".  I thought the same thing for the same reason:  That there was no way that, less than two years after the Tea Party, motivated by the passage of ObamaCare, gave the GOP the biggest midterm election victory in generations, the Republicans were was going to nominate the most anti-Tea Party candidate and the unapologetic architect of the prototype for ObamaCare.  (I thought Romney would start his campaign with an apology for RomneyCare but that even that wouldn't save him as the conservatives eventually coalesced around one candidate.)

Now I did predict that the MSM would savage all of Romney's rivals and try to open a path for him to the nomination, but I underestimated just how successful the MSM would be.  (Likewise, I was shocked at the MSM's success in defeating the Clinton Machine in 2008.  I'll never underestimate them again.)