Did Floridians vote for Mitt Romney or against Newt Gingrich?

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By DOUG SWORD and KEVIN O’HORAN

Nowhere in Manatee or Sarasota counties did Mitt Romney do better than on the well-to-do southern half of Longboat Key, where he walloped Newt Gingrich by 54 percentage points.

Romney won 706 more votes along this Gulf of Mexico Drive precinct than Gingrich, who failed to see that kind of margin of victory in 28 largely rural counties he won on Tuesday.

While Romney won big on this coast, and statewide, political watchers wondered about the underlying nature of his win: Did Floridians vote for Romney because they like him? Or were they simply voting against Gingrich, with Romney being seen as the most viable candidate to take on President Barack Obama in November?

Some would argue that Romney may be the only Republican up to that task, but Longboat resident Carol Sue Caggiano was not ready to vote for him — at least not yet.

“I’m sitting on the fence about Romney,” said the 73-year-old grandmother of 15. Instead, she cast her vote for Ron Paul — more or less a protest against what she saw as an intensely negative campaign in Florida.

Caggiano is hoping the fall campaign will be more issue-oriented, and noted that she will probably vote for the Republican nominee.

Despite anyone’s reservations, Romney’s victory in Sarasota and Manatee counties was stunning when compared with other GOP races during the last four years.

In 2008, Romney’s support in the presidential primary was limited to the suburbs of Bradenton and Sarasota while John McCain dominated along the coast, winning Sarasota County by 6 percentage points and Manatee by 2.

Gov. Rick Scott cleaned up in the suburbs, winning Sarasota County by 8 percentage points and Manatee by 8, but split some of the urban areas with Bill McCollum in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2010.

But on Tuesday, in both the suburban and urban portions of Manatee and Sarasota counties, it was all Mitt Romney.

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The former Massachusetts governor won an overwhelming 249 out of 269 precincts in the two counties, while Gingrich, the onetime House speaker, won 18, and former Sen. Rick Santorum took two.

Among the larger Gingrich precincts were a handful along U.S. 301 in north Sarasota and southern Manatee County and a couple between Venice and Englewood.

Romney won the state by 14 percentage points, but he took Sarasota County by 24 and Manatee by 21. So, a precinct-by-precinct look at the results shows little except that Romney was dominant most everywhere.

Romney clearly won the urban Republicans that he could not lure from McCain four years ago.

“He did amazingly well in your neck of the woods from what he did in 2008,” Dan Smith, a University of Florida political science professor, said about Romney’s results in Sarasota and Manatee.

Romney’s 2008 performance in the two counties is reminiscent of Scott’s experience in 2010. Romney and Scott did well in more suburban areas, but not as well in urban areas and portions of the coast.

But Tuesday, all those McCain and McCollum precincts in Sarasota, Bradenton, Venice and North Port went for Romney.

Part of the explanation is that Southwest Florida voters, whom Smith described as being largely “country club Republicans,” simply did not like Gingrich.

Another element: Romney ran differently in 2012 than he did in 2008. “In 2008 he was running to the right of John McCain,” Smith said. “This year he was running to the left” of three other GOP rivals.

Part of the explanation for Romney’s winning both urban and suburban precincts this time is that voters had become more familiar with him over the course of four years and two primaries, said Joe Gruters, the Sarasota County GOP chairman.

“Essentially, in Sarasota, it means he won the establishment and conservative voting blocs,” Gruters said. “He won across the board in every category.”