While most of our attention today has focused on Democratic primaries for various District races, we shouldn’t forget that the Republican Party is still in the throes of picking a presidential nominee. But there were no surprises on the GOP ballots in the District and Maryland, both of which went overwhelmingly for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Associated Press and other news organizations began declaring shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m.

Romney was projected to win with wide margins in both the District and Maryland. Neither primary was ever thought to be a tight race, though both will help Romney pad his lead in securing delegates for the Republican National Convention. Before tonight, the former governor was already more than 300 delegates ahead of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, according to CNN’s tally.

At the time of this writing, the Maryland State Board of Elections reports that Romney is leading with nearly 54 percent of votes, though very few ballots have been officially counted so far.

With his victories tonight, Romney could snag 37 more delegates from Maryland and 13 from the District, pushing him well past 600 total pledged delegates by most counts. It takes 1,144 to win the nomination.

Of course, there was little, if any, formal campaigning on the part of the leading Republican candidates for president in either D.C. or Maryland. Romney announced his D.C. campaign chairs just five days ago in a press release. Santorum, meanwhile was not on the ballot in the District.

Both Romney and Santorum have spent much of the past week focusing on tonight’s biggest prize, Wisconsin, which is expected to be a much tighter race.

With his main rival for the Republican nomination was absent from the D.C. ballot, Romney faced off against Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who actually did make a few recent appearances in Maryland. Though with his campaign structure collapsing in the past few weeks, Gingrich barely made a dent.