Paul grabbed 19 percent of the vote, but still came in third place. Paul underwhelms in Nevada

LAS VEGAS—Just as in the other early presidential states, Ron Paul surpassed his 2008 performance Saturday.

But in a state where expectations for his campaign were higher than anywhere else to date, the Texas congressman’s third-place finish marked an underwhelming outcome for a candidate whose strategy is predicated on running well in caucus states like Nevada.


While Paul won a respectable 19 percent Saturday — 5 points higher than four years ago — he nevertheless placed third behind Newt Gingrich, whose haphazard Nevada effort barely compared to Paul’s disciplined and well-organized operation.

No one expected Paul to win, in large part because of Mitt Romney’s strength here. But a solid second place seemed within reach in Nevada, Paul’s top state in 2008 and a place that had lots of libertarian-oriented voters for whom his limited government philosophy had much appeal.

Paul set up a Nevada office more than six months ago. His campaign claimed thousands of volunteers. They aggressively targeted service workers, Latinos, rural voters, veterans and even Mormons.

While Gingrich invested no money on television ads in the state, Paul outspent even winner Mitt Romney. Paul poured in $869,650 compared to Romney’s $488,460 since the start of the year, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

But the returns were modest. In 2008, he carried just one of the Nevada’s 17 counties or their equivalents. This year, he carried two. He lost a third, Storey County, to Romney by one vote — 53 to 52.

Throughout the week, Paul campaign officials said publicly that they thought they could win outright if turnout was low enough and expressed confidence they’d finish second.

The candidate went out of his way Friday to appear in Pahrump, a town of 36,000 in Nye County – the one he won last time. His state campaign chairman, Carl Bunce, bragged that Paul volunteers had signed up 800 new voters in the last six months in that county alone. In 2008, Paul got 415 votes. With all the votes from Nye counted, he got 454 in 2012.

In the end, placing third — and finishing under 20 percent for the third consecutive contest — isn’t likely to have a material effect on Paul’s overall goal of collecting delegates in the hopes of establishing himself as a force at the GOP convention. But the result suggests that he has only incrementally expanded his base of support over 2008, rather than established himself as a credible contender for the Republican nomination, and that won’t help him win many new converts in the states to come.

Tellingly, Paul left town before the caucuses took place. After two events Friday night, he flew to Minnesota for Saturday town halls. He issued no public statement about his finish. He returned to Texas for a day off Sunday, and he’ll return to Minnesota Monday ahead of the state’s Tuesday caucuses.

Paul conceded Sunday on ABC’s This Week that the prospect of a third place finish was disappointing.

“The votes aren’t all counted yet, and there seems to be a bit of chaos out there even though it was a small caucus vote,” he said. “There was a lot of confusion — if you go from second to third, there would be some disappointment, but on the positive side we will get a block of votes, we still will get some delegates and we still will pursue our plan to go into the caucus states and we will have to wait and see how things go.”

What makes the Nevada performance sting more is that Paul clearly aimed high in the Silver State. Normally he delivers a largely uncustomized pro-liberty message. To a remarkable degree, he tailored his Nevada pitch to parochial issues over the last week. He brought up his opposition to the nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, his plan to eliminate federal taxes on tips (a play for service workers) and demanded that the federal government make it easier for foreigners to get visas to boost Vegas tourism. He even scheduled two events focused on wooing Latino voters.

According to entrance polls, Paul won the youth vote, and also won a plurality of voters (39 percent) who said that the most important candidate quality was being a “true conservative.” Unfortunately for Paul, only 18 percent said picking the truest conservative was the most important of four qualities offered.

Paul carried 55 percent of Republicans who said they are not religious. Despite making efforts to win some of the Mormon vote, the polls showed Romney held 88 percent of his fellow Latter-Day Saints.

The Paul forces scored a symbolic victory when they stormed a special late-night caucus set up at the school named after casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich’s biggest financial backer. Paul wound up with 183 votes to 61 for Gingrich and 57 for Romney.

Clark County, home to Las Vegas and the state’s most populous county, has still not released complete results. But Paul underperformed there in 2008, and his strategists had said they expected to lag there again this year. With 71 percent of precincts reporting from around the state, Paul had 18.6 percent and 4,619 votes. Gingrich had 22.7 percent. Based on entrance polls, the order of finish is unlikely to change.

The Paul campaign says that what really matters to them is accumulating delegates more than winning votes in a popularity contest. They believe that they’ll still wind up getting more delegates out of the state than the preference vote reflects. Romney won the most votes in Garrett Elmer’s precinct caucus at Green Valley Ranch High School on Saturday morning, for example, but five of the seven delegates elected by the group say they plan to back Paul at the Clark County Republican Convention on March 10.

“Delegates are what matter, and that’s what going to elect the Republican nominee,” said Elmer, an active Paul volunteer who works in air conditioning sales.

He and a devoted group hope to get elected from the county convention to the state convention and then the national convention as delegates.

The problem is that the popularity contest is binding, so even Paul supporters will be bound to vote for Romney on the first ballot at the state convention.

Some Paul supporters seemed grudgingly to have come to terms with the increasing likelihood that Romney will be the nominee.

“I feel like its fruitless because it’s the person who has the most money that’s probably going to win,” said Tom Simon, 39, an unemployed file clerk who caucused for Paul in Henderson. “It’s a fixed game. It’s rigged. But besides what — pick up a weapon? — what am I going to do? This is the only thing I can do — vote and speak my mind. Based on what I saw, people are totally asleep.”