The following 15 States held Republican Primaries on February 5th. I will list them all along with the percentage of votes that Ron Paul won in each:

Alabama: Ron Paul 3%
Arizona: Ron Paul 4%
Arkansas: Ron Paul 5%
California: Ron Paul 4%
Connecticut: Ron Paul 4%
Delaware: Ron Paul 4%
Georgia: Ron Paul 3%
Illinois: Ron Paul 5%
Massachusettes: Ron Paul 3%
Missouri: Ron Paul 4%
New Jersey: Ron Paul 5%
New York: Ron Paul 6%
Oklahoma: Ron Paul 3%
Tennessee: Ron Paul 6%
Utah: Ron Paul 3%

The following 6 States held Republican Caucuses on February 5th. I will list them all along with the percentage of votes that Ron Paul won in each:

Alaska: Ron Paul 17%
Colorado: Ron Paul 8%
Minnesota: Ron Paul 17%
Montana: Ron Paul 25%
North Dakota: Ron Paul 21%
West Virginia: Ron Paul 0%

Several observations jump right out at you from this data. The first is the remarkably small range in support, a 3% differential, that Ron Paul registered in the Super Tuesday primaries that he was on the ballot for; all of his results falling between 3% and 6%, with his average showing for all 15 Super Tuesday primary states combined being 4.13%.

The caucus states however tell a different story, with Ron Paul's best showing in a caucus state (Montana where he won an impressive one quarter of the total vote that night) beating his best showing in a primary state (New York and Tennessee) by over 400%. Ron Paul also had his poorest showing in the caucus state of West Virginia, where it seemed he could not reach the viable threshold and tallied zero support as a result. His average showing for all 6 Super Tuesday caucus states combined is 14.67%. If one were to arbitrarily assume that Ron Paul initially received the same degree of support in West Virginia that he did in his average primary state, had his WV support been viable (a conservative estimate) Paul's average percentage of support in these 6 States would break 15%.

In total then, even factoring in his WV support at zero, Ron Paul received a little over 350% more support in Super Tuesday caucus states than he did in Super Tuesday primary states.

Admittedly there are other variables at play, the most important being the liklihood that Ron Paul campaigned much more aggressively in caucus states than in primary states, but that begs the question, why? There is some potential circular reasoning to consider. Did Ron Paul fare so much worse in primary states because he only contested caucus states, or did he only contest caucus states because he knew he fared so much more poorly in primary states? Some circumstantial evidence supports the latter conclusion.

There was one primary state that Ron Paul did very aggressively contest and that was New Hampshire. He had his best 2008 primary showing in New Hampshire, winning 8% of the vote. New Hampshire of course is the state with the motto "Live Free or Die", good potential territory for an anti-war Libertarian. Although NH has been trending Democratic in very recent years, those Democrats weren't voting in NH's Republican primary, and by all reports Ron Paul devoted significant resourses toward doing well in New Hampshire. New Hampshire's primary date was sandwiched between two Republican caucus contests which Ron Paul also contested, and the Republican field was more crowded in all of them than on Super Tuesday, with Thompson and Giuliani still in the race for all three. In Iowa preceding New Hampshire, Ron Paul won 10% of the vote, and in Nevada following New Hampshire, Ron Paul won 14% of the vote.

Observatrions and insights gleened from looking at Ron Paul's relative success in caucus over primary states are not directly transferable onto the Democratic nomination battle now unfolding for several important reasons, most notable among them being the fact that both remaining Democrats in the race for the Democratic nomination have always been serious contenders to walk away with that nomination. None the less it does, in my opinion, shed light on how a highly dedicated and motivated core base of supporters can exercise far greater influence in determining the results in a caucus contest than they can in a primary contest. In Ron Paul's case the difference is striking.