by Maisie Allison
Missouri is holding a delegate-less primary today. As Jim Geraghty notes, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain will appear on the ballot, but Newt Gingrich will not. Chris Good explains what happened:
Gingrich … made no attempt to qualify. The state party, meanwhile, didn’t even want the primary to happen. That’s because today’s vote won’t be the main event: Missouri will hold caucuses on March 17, where voters will begin the process of selecting and allocating delegates. Today’s primary is a vestige of state law that Missouri’s GOP-controlled legislature failed to change. Consequently, Rick Santorum is the only presidential candidate paying much attention today.
While all three contests today are non-binding, First Read insists that the horse-race matters:
[T]hey have more projected delegates at stake — a combined 76 (40 in Minnesota, 36 in Colorado, and zero in Missouri, whose delegates will be determined a later date) — than all the combined delegates for Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Second, they all occur in presidential battleground states. And third, they give Mitt Romney's challengers, particularly Rick Santorum, the opportunity to upset Romney. Indeed, if Santorum is going to make a serious move now, it's going to come in one of the caucus contests, where either a more conservative or better organized candidate can pull off a victory. Bottom line: It’s do-or-die time for Santorum, and he needs to win two of these three races (Minnesota and the beauty contest of Missouri) to keep his White House chances alive.
The Dish 