 This included the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, termed "Obamacare" by its opponents, as well as government spending as a whole.The primary has become one of several key early state nominating contests in the process of choosing the nominee of the Republican Party for the election for President of the United States.It has historically been more important for the Republican Party than for the Democratic Party; from its inception in 1980, until the nomination of Mitt Romney in 2012, the winner of the Republican presidential primary had gone on to win the nomination.