GOP leaders in Maine may have already declared Mitt Romney the winner, but Ron Paul hasn't yet conceded. Romney finished with 39 percent of the vote, followed closely by Ron Paul at 36 percent. Santorum and Gingrich came in with 18 and 6 percent respectively.
The difference, though, between Romney's first place and Paul's second was a mere 194 votes, and only 84 percent of the vote was counted when the announcement was made. Washington County, which the Paul campaign was confident he would win, postponed their caucus until next week due to an expected snow storm; 3-4 inches was forecasted, but the area only received a light dusting of snow.
Paul's campaign manager, John Tate, expressed outrage over the cancellation in an email to supporters. He said, "This is Maine we’re talking about. The Girl Scouts had an event today in Washington County that wasn’t cancelled!"
Because the Washington County caucus was not held Saturday, the state Republican Chairman Charlie Webster announced that their votes would not count, no matter how close the vote was, angering Ron Paul supporters who believe Ron Paul may be the actual winner when all of the votes have been tallied. Washington County Republican Chairman, Chris Gardner, a Romney supporter, told the AP that he did not realize his county's votes wouldn't count toward the total when the decision was made to postpone.
The win for Romney was necessary to recover from his three losses earlier in the week. For Paul to win the popular vote in Maine would be monumental. He hasn't won a state yet and winning Maine would silence the popular media refrain that he is unelectable. Paul expressed confidence in his speech Saturday night, though, that he would control the Maine delegation at the GOP nominating covention in August in Tampa, Florida.
Paul, once again, doubled his support in Maine in 2012 from 2008, when he received 18 percent of the vote, again proving the media pundits wrong that there is a ceiling to his support.
Regardless of what the Maine GOP has decided, if Paul gets more votes next week in the delayed caucus than Mitt Romney, Paul will be the winner.
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