New Iowa Tally Shows Santorum Winning Caucus
Certified total shows Romney trailing by 34 votes, but irregularities leave no official victor.
| Posted Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at 10:04 AM
Rick Santorum may have beaten Mitt Romney in Iowa, but voting irregularities mean no official winner will be declared
Photo by John W. Adkisson/Getty Images.
So much for that historic double that Mitt Romney managed by finishing first in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Iowa Republicans say that a two-week review of the caucus vote totals show that Rick Santorum actually finished 34 votes ahead of Romney, who was originally declared the winner of the first-in-the-nation nominating contest by a scant 8 votes.
Santorum, however, won't be declared the official winner, the Washington Post reports, because results from eight of 1,774 precincts could not be found for the certification process. Those missing precincts contained more votes than the number currently separating Santorum and Romney.
Santorum's camp, however, was quick to declare retroactive victory. "The history books will read that the winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 is Rick Santorum. That’s the bottom line," Santorum adviser Hogan Gidley told the New York Times Thursday. "This just goes to prove what we’ve been saying: We can take it right to Mitt Romney with a fraction of the resources and beat him. We can do the same to Barack Obama."
For his part, Romney issued a statement declaring the contest "a virtual tie" and thanking the Iowa Republican Party "for their careful attention to the caucus process."
It remains to be seen how much the recount will impact the GOP nominating race. Romney has already benefited from two-plus weeks of being known as the Iowa winner, and his apparent victory there coupled with a dominating one in New Hampshire generated plenty of good press for the former Massachusetts governor. No non-incumbent Republican had ever won both of the two early-nominating contests, a record that will continue for at least another four years.
