As the four remaining Republican presidential hopefuls vied for Maryland’s 37 primary delegates Tuesday, low voter turnout on the campus cast a shadow over an otherwise bright day for campus supporters of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
He won Maryland’s winner-take-all delegates by 47.8 percent, as of 11 p.m. yesterday. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum finished with 30 percent of the vote; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich won 11 percent and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) ended with 9.6 percent. Officials at this campus’ polling locations said 86 students voted at Ritchie Coliseum as of 6 p.m. yesterday and 77 total voted at Stamp Student Union.
According to Student Government Association Director of Governmental Affairs Zach Cohen, low voter turnout cannot be pinpointed to one particular reason. Several students and officials said it was because it was a Republican primary on a fairly liberal campus and many students are still registered at their home districts.
“Turnout has been relatively low, but not as low as we expected – especially with not too much contention on the democratic side,” Cohen said. “Not too many students have been motivated to come to the polls today.”
Cohen said the flow of voters filtering into Stamp’s polling station was “pretty steady” at about noon, but it was fairly lackluster at other times.
Sophomore communication major Miriam Mathis was one of the 163 who voted. For her, voting yesterday was more about exercising her right to vote than it was choosing a particular candidate.
“There weren’t any issues specifically, but I think I owe it to all the women who fought to be able to vote,” Mathis said.
Mathis said many students probably did not vote in yesterday’s election because it was a primary.
“It’s not very well advertised on campus, either,” Mathis said. “No one is going around encouraging people to vote. I mean, people chalk for everything, so they could at least chalk for [the primary].”
Senior government and politics major Zachary Crowley – who remains registered to vote in Harford County – said his class schedule and the distance between College Park and his designated polling station kept him from voting.
“Because I got out of class so late, if I would have tried to drive home, I would have hit rush hour traffic and probably not made it in time or had to turn right around and drive all the way back,” Crowley said, adding, “I’m guessing there will likely be a low turnout just because we are at a very liberal campus. Most people probably think that they don’t have stake in the outcome.”
In a speech last night in Wisconsin, Romney said he was grateful for three victories that help him lead the GOP presidential pack significantly.
Candidates need 1,144 delegates to win the nomination. Romney currently has 646, while Santorum has 272 and Paul has 51.
“Thank you to Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington, D.C.,” Romney said. “We won a great victory tonight in our campaign to restore the promise of America.”
Maryland is not often at the center of a compelling Republican presidential primary race. Because Republican primary rules have changed nationally – to the point that some states have abandoned systems that award all delegates to the winner of one state – this state’s primary has become more significant, according to Brad Coker, a pollster from Jacksonville, Fla.,-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc.
“This stage of the race, it’s really all about delegates,” he said. “[Maryland is] important, probably more important than it’s been in a long time just because of the changes in the Republican primary rules.”
Coker added the state’s Republican voter base is largely suburban, a demographic of the party that is most likely to vote for Romney.
“For Romney, now it will be a symbolic victory,” he said. “It’s going to help him bring up his delegate lead and help bring him closer to the nomination.”
Journalism professor and election expert Chris Hanson said this election cycle provides a unique look into how the GOP is choosing a candidate.
“The basic primary election constituency of the Republican Party has long been a minority of factions whose allegiance has been problematic for them,” Hanson said. “Normally the Republicans have been more likely than the Democrats to decide, ‘Let’s coalesce around a candidate.’ But now, it looks as if a candidate without much enthusiasm from the base of the party is very likely to be nominated.”
There is no clear-cut nominee at this point in the primary season, so the Republican Party is damaging its chances to defeat President Obama, Hanson said.
“Traditionally, there would have been a clear front-runner at the beginning of the race, and that person would be nominated,” he said. “The party this year is divided against itself, to the point that whoever was the front-runner seemed to change practically every day or every week. How it sorts out is anybody’s guess, but the party has already bled itself a great deal.”
For Cohen, elections boil down to voting for the most qualified – not a single issue.
“It’s more of a candidate thing for me and about who I think is best for the country,” Cohen said. “I think that a lot of students are especially motivated by things like the national debt and social issues, but then they’ll discount certain candidates because of their stance of those issues.”
Mohsen Farshneshani, a junior government and politics major and president of this university’s chapter of Youth for Ron Paul said it does not matter who registered Republican students vote for. It is just important that they do so.
“I honestly think that our generation’s apathy is one of the most overwhelming and heartbreaking setbacks – no matter what we do, no matter how much we talk to them, a lot of them just don’t care,” he said. “As soon as people put down their labels, put down their bias and recognize the truth, that’s when a change will come.”
Staff writer Jim Bach contributed to this report. sinclair@umdbk.com
