And so it ends. The 2012 US Republican Presidential Primary, which has been running for almost six months now, has finished its last primary. After 49 states and 6 other territories have voted, the final contest of the already-decided Republican Primary took part in Utah, one of the most reliably-Republican states in the country.
Utah is (to state the obvious) famous for its Mormon population, and Mitt Romney, who has already secured enough delegates to secure the nomination some weeks ago, was expected to do very well there. Tonight the anti-climactic result came in: Romney scored 93% of the vote.
Utah's final position is somewhat ironic, because it was emblematic of what happened to the race. It started out as an unpredictable, interesting and issue-raising contest, but at some point it settled down into a matter of money and machines, and became (as emphasized by Utah's support of their co-religionist) mostly a matter of identity politics.
And now that the Utah Primary is finished, I will soon report on the entire primary contest, hopefully sometime before the convention begins and the main campaign is launched in earnest.