New York residents will cast their ballots Tuesday to help determine the Republican nominee for the 2012 presidential election.

The candidates are: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania recently dropped out of the running. Santorum accumulated 269 delegates during his campaign, according to The New York Times election website.

Romney is currently the leader of the race with 697 delegates. Newt Gingrich follows at a distant second place with 137 delegates, and Ron Paul is currently in last place with 67 delegates. To win the nomination, candidates must earn 1,144 delegates. There are currently 1, 115 delegates remaining in the election, according to the website.

The New York primary is important because of the state’s 95 delegates, which is the third-highest total in the country. Winning the New York delegates holds high significance for the candidates because other large states moved their primary elections to earlier dates. Those states were penalized by losing up to half of their delegates, according to a Jan. 30 article in The Post-Standard.

Officials in other large states moved up the date of their primaries in the hope that a Republican presidential nominee would emerge sooner.

A Siena College Research Institute poll conducted in early April identified the potential voting behavior of New York voters.

The poll asked 808 registered New York voters about their voting habits and for whom they will be voting. Fifty-one percent of voters said they will be voting for Romney, 18 percent for Santorum, 11 percent for Paul, 6 percent for Gingrich and 14 percent had no opinion, according to the poll.

If the presidential election was held today, 60 percent of registered New York voters would vote for President Barack Obama and 35 percent of the voters would vote for Mitt Romney if he were the Republican nominee, according to the poll.

In New York, according to the poll, 48 percent of registered voters are Democrat, 24 percent are Republican and 25 percent are Independent or other. Thirty-nine percent of registered voters reside in New York City, while 23 percent live in the suburbs and 38 percent live in upstate New York.

A majority of voters are in the age groups of 35-54 and 55 and older, both tied with 36 percent. People ages 18-34 are the smallest population of registered voters, with 22 percent.

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Published on April 24, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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