IT WAS not, to be honest, all that super. Only ten states voted on March 6th, compared with the 21 that voted on the last Super Tuesday in 2008; and they delivered a mixed message. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, won six of them. His nearest rival, Rick Santorum, won three, and came within a percentage point of wresting the main catch of the day, Ohio, away from him. The remaining state, Georgia, went to its native son, Newt Gingrich: maybe just enough to prevent his campaign from dissolving in its own bombast. Ron Paul, a strident libertarian, won nothing, but his campaign will soldier on to the end.

Nothing, in short, was settled on a night that was more about losing than winning. But Mr Santorum lost more than Mr Romney did. As in Michigan a week earlier, the conservative former senator missed a chance to upend the contest by scoring, despite his vastly inferior funding and organisation, a victory in a big swing state. Had Mr Santorum won Michigan or Ohio, he might have fatally wounded Mr Romney. Instead, the former governor of Massachusetts plods on, remorselessly amassing delegates. He has some 400 of them, significantly more than the combined tally of his three rivals.

Mr Romney, however, was a loser as well. He faces a long slog to reach his target of 1,144 delegates. Unless Mr Santorum gives up—which he has no obvious reason to do—the contest will not be settled for many weeks yet. More seriously, Mr Romney once again managed to remind America how weak his support is in the Midwestern states in which elections are won and lost. With the sole, admittedly large, exception of Florida, he has won solid victories only in states that are either small or very unlikely (such as Massachusetts) to vote Republican in the general election in November.

As he contests the primaries, the Republican front-runner is the victim of a double squeeze. To his right are legions of social conservatives, evangelical Christians for the most part, who harbour deep suspicions about Mr Romney because of his Mormonism and his past flexibility over gay marriage and abortion. On his left flank stand America's white working-class voters, who face stagnant wages at best and protracted unemployment at worst. With a personal fortune of some $250m and a record of closing businesses as well as starting them, Mr Romney was always a tough sell; but his attempts to suck up to these voters have been comically hamfisted (he even reassured carworkers that his wife owned a couple of Cadillacs). Mr Santorum's achievement has been to forge the two groups into a powerful conservative-populist coalition.

How to seal the deal

There is nothing Mr Romney can do about the evangelicals: they will never love him. By pandering to them he will only scare away independents. And conservative hatred of the “secular socialist” Barack Obama will drive them to the polls in November as if they heard Satan's hooves at their heels. America's stressed median-income voters matter far more.

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Some may be so angry with the richest 1% that they will never vote for Mr Romney. But the Harvard-educated, arugula-munching Mr Obama is hardly a man of the people either. What these voters want above all is jobs, something the current president has not provided. Rather than making unconvincing attempts to be one of them or taking populist swings at China, Mr Romney would do much better to explain why his entrepreneurial, pragmatic skills are exactly what is needed to put them back to productive work. That would be good for America, which needs a reminder that capitalism usually delivers; it would also provide this awkward but efficient former chief executive with a chance to be himself.