Washington Republican caucuses, 2012
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| Results of the nonbinding strawpoll by county. Orange indicates a county won by Romney, gold by Paul, dark green by Santorum. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Washington state Republican caucuses nonbinding strawpoll | |||
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| Candidate | Votes | Percentage | |
 Mitt Romney
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19,111 | 37.65% | |
| Ron Paul | 12,594 | 24.81% | |
| Rick Santorum | 12,089 | 23.81% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 5,221 | 10.28% | |
| Uncommitted | 1,656 | 3.26% | |
| Total Write-Ins | 93 | 0.18% | |
| Totals | 50,764 | 100.00% | |
The Republican caucuses were held on March 3, 2012. Since 1992, the Washington Republicans have used a presidential preferential primary in addition to the caucuses. The primary was, however, canceled this year for budgetary reasons, as was the one in 2004.
The initial caucuses were held on March 3, 2012, with voters reporting to caucus locations by precinct. However, the caucuses did not allocate delegates to the different candidates, they did only elected delegates to the county conventions and took part in a nonbinding strawpoll. County conventions convened all through March and April, each picking delegates to the state conventions who was not bound to any particular candidate either. The state convention was held on May 31-June 2, 2012. At that time, state delegates to the national convention was legally bound to specific candidates.
With 3,677,919 registered voters as of February 29, the turnout was 1.4%.
The 37th Legislative District covers parts of King County, and the Republican caucus for the district was held Saturday, April 21 at Dimmitt Middle School. The caucus was broken up by King County Republican Party Chairman Lori Sotelo after the caucus elected Ron Paul supporter Tamra Smilanich as chair. Sotelo declared that the caucus was no longer a Party event, but had become a Ron Paul Campaign event, and that the attendees would have to vacate the building. As Smilanich attempted to conduct business, Sotelo stated to the caucus, "The Ron Paul campaign does not have authority to rent this space. They have not provided insurance for this building", and (addressing Smilanich) "You do not have authority to run the meeting in this building. You will have ten minutes before this building must be vacated, Tamra." The caucus was moved outside at about 12:30 pm, business was resumed, and delegates to the April 28 county convention were elected, all eleven of those being Paul supporters. Each caucus-goer had been required to pay a $10 fee to attend the caucus, Sotelo saying that the fee was to help pay for the party's expenses for using the school. Sotelo refused to refund the $10 fees after the caucus was moved outside.
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