Mitt Romney wins West Virginia primary

{mosads}Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) finished a distant second in the direct-election primary, which doesn’t cater to his strategy of working behind the scenes to capture delegates through a sustained presence in local caucuses.

West Virginia’s five electoral college votes are safely in Romney’s corner at this point. While there’s no recent polling, West Virginia has been particularly unfriendly to President Obama. In 2008, then-candidate Hillary Clinton won more than 80 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) bested Obama by 9 percent in the general election that November.