N.H. Primary 2012

Mississippi and Alabama were big wins for Rick Santorum in the fight for the GOP presidential nomination.

While never considered strong for Mitt Romney, those states further revealed the vulnerabilities of his campaign, specifically, problems identifying with many elements of the Republican base.

The next big contest is Tuesday in Illinois.

It's a state rich in delegates (69) and in something else that should be good news for Romney: more moderate Republicans. But he still needs to connect with even those voters.

For many following the Republican presidential contest, the big question is who's winning.

That's not easily answered if you go only by who has won each state's primary or caucus. But if you measure who's won the most pledged convention delegates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is clearly in the lead.

So much so, in fact, that Romney's campaign insists there's no way his rivals can catch up or keep him from getting the 1,144 delegates needed for securing the nomination in Tampa this summer during the Republican National Convention.

We know he's running for President and that he's become a household name. We know he ran unsuccessfully in 2008 as well. We know that he was Governor of Massachusetts and that he was behind a major health care bill that passed in that state. We know he's Mormon, Republican, good looking and has a great smile, but who is the 'real Romney'. Who is the Mitt Romney behind the campaign promises, debates, political ads and handshakes? What drives him, what were the events in his life that motivated him and why does he want to be President so badly?

There were a lot of good stories from the 2008 presidential election, including Hillary Clinton's serious run for the Democratic nomination, not to mention the election of the first African-American president. The whole story was covered in the bestselling — and controversial — book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change.

We’re looking at yesterday’s voting in Ohio, Tennessee, Idaho, Virginia, Vermont, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Alaska and Georgia in the Republican nomination contests.  We’re looking closer at the results and at where the campaigns go from here.

Guests:

Wayne Lesperance: Professor of Political Science and Director for the Center for Civic Engagement at New England College.

Dante Scala: Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. He tweets @graniteprof.

Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas still won’t say if he has decided whether or not to run for Governor of New Hampshire. 

While Republican candidates continue to slug it out for their party's White House nomination, President Obama is getting a head start on the general election.

Obama's grassroots campaign is already hard at work with volunteers hosting house parties and staffing phone banks to find and mobilize the president's supporters. The campaign has opened five offices in Virginia, and that's not counting the basement of Sue Langley's house in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, where more than a dozen volunteers assembled this past weekend.