[imgcontainer] [img:2012LouisianaRPrimary.jpg] [source]Daily Yonder[/source] Rick Santorum didn’t depend on rural votes in Louisiana. He won in all geographic categories. [/imgcontainer]
Rick Santorum thumped Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary in Louisiana yesterday, winning easily in rural, urban and exurban parishes.
The national press had played up Santorum’s appeal to rural voters in the week before Saturday’s primary. (“Rick Santorum’s rural edge keeps him in GOP Contest,” read a headline in the Boston Herald.)
But the former Pennsylvania senator beat Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, handily in every geographic category.
(Newt Gingrich got 16.1 percent of the vote and Rep. Ron Paul won 6 percent; there were no geographic differences in the voting for Gingrich or Paul.)
You can see in the chart above that Santorum’s rural percentage (53.1 percent) was about 12 percent higher than what he won in the cities (47.3 percent).
Romney did better in the cities (where he won 29.3 percent) than in rural parishes (23.9 percent).
Santorum’s worst parish was Orleans, where he won just 29.5 percent of the vote. In half the state’s 16 urban parishes, however, Santorum won 50 percent or more of the vote.
As shown in the chart above, Santorum did best in exurban communities, parishes that are part of metro areas but are more rural in character.
But as in Mississippi and Alabama, Santorum won across the board in Louisiana, doing best where the Republican party is strongest and worst in the parishes where Democrats will likely win in November.
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