Rick Santorum’s campaign claimed a belated victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday morning after certified results from the contest showed him leading Mitt Romney by 34 votes, a reversal from the eight-vote edge for Mr. Romney on caucus night.
Matt Strawn, chairman of Iowa’s Republican Party, announced Thursday morning that an actual winner could not be determined in the caucuses because results from eight of 1,774 precincts could not be located for certification. But of the votes that could be reviewed by the party, the officials said, Mr. Santorum finished narrowly ahead of Mr. Romney.
“Just as I did in the early morning hours on Jan. 4, I congratulate Senator Santorum and Governor Romney on a hard-fought effort during the closest contest in caucus history,” Mr. Strawn said in a statement. “Our goal throughout the certification process was to most accurately reflect and report how Iowans voted the evening of Jan. 3. We understand the importance to the candidates involved, but as Iowans, we understand the responsibility we have as temporary caretakers of the Iowa caucuses.”
The certified results found that Mr. Santorum received 29,839 votes, and Mr. Romney received 29,805 votes.
Mr. Romney called Mr. Santorum on Thursday to concede the Iowa caucuses, a spokesman for Mr. Santorum said. The call affirmed the Santorum victory in Iowa.
He will argue to voters in South Carolina, aides said, that the result shows that he is the best-equipped candidate to emerge as a conservative alternative to Mr. Romney.
“The history books will read that the winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 is Rick Santorum. That’s the bottom line,” Hogan Gidley, an adviser to Mr. Santorum said in an interview 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.”
Mr. Romney’s campaign shrugged off the new vote totals, saying that it had always considered the Iowa results to have been a virtual tie.
“The results from Iowa caucus night revealed a virtual tie,” Mr. Romney said in an e-mail statement to reporters. “I would like to thank the Iowa Republican Party for their careful attention to the caucus process, and we once again recognize Rick Santorum for his strong performance in the state.”
The muddled result could be a psychological gain for Mr. Santorum, and robs Mr. Romney of being able to say that he swept the early contests.
Mr. Santorum had initially referred to the results in Iowa as a tie. He told Fox News shortly after the caucuses ended that he dismissed reports about possible errors in the count.
“That doesn’t really matter to me. I mean, this was a tie,” Mr. Santorum said on the network at the time."
Do you think that voters will continue to see Romney as the winner of the Iowa caucus? Or will they now shift their attention to Santorum because they now know the true winner of the caucus? How much of a gain is this for Santorum and how much was it a loss for Romney?
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/the-iowa-caucuses-will-have-no-official-winner/
5 comments:
In my opinion this can really go either way. Now that Santorum claims the lead in the Iowa caucus, people will analyze Santorum and Romney to see their similarities and differences. However Santorum will have to do a lot more to re-gain the momentum and get his name out there as the front runner where as Romney was able to surf his way around with his flood of momentum. This will help Santorum come across a much stronger competitor to Romney than before so Romney will have to do his best to show America he is still the leading person.
Honestly...it is too late for Santorum to gain an edge. If I've learned anything from our discussion of political campaigns it's that momentum is everything. Once a candidate has gained momentum, he is almost unstoppable, and has a considerable lead over his fellow candidates. In "winning" Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney won the electorate's support, and the position as primary front-runner. Regardless of Iowa's actual results, the damage has been done. Announcing a last-minute win on the part of Santorum will not boost his chances after Romney has become a household name and the anticipated Republican nominee.
When I heard of Santorum's belated victory, I was not surprised. The original vote was close, and Iowa is an evangelical state; Santorum thrives in more religious, socially conservative states. After considering the news, however, I realized why the Iowa Caucus is important. Iowa is not a controversial state or a state with many electors. Its value in the primary season is primarily to kick off the candidates' campaigns. Members of the electorate look to the Iowa Caucus as a guide, a suggestion of who will immediately drop out, and who actually stands a chance to gain the Republican nomination.
In that respect, Iowa gave Romney a 'push' in the right direction. Two weeks after the Iowa Caucus, citizens have already placed their faith in the original "winner." During the primary season, many voters will still talk about Romney as the one who gained an early lead, while Santorum will be virtually forgotten.
At the same time, I don't think that Santorum's fate would have been any different if the media had announced his victory earlier. He still would have fallen behind in less socially conservative states like New Hampshire.
In essence...Santorum had little to no chance, with or without an Iowa victory.
I think that the voters right now do see Romney as the front runner for the GOP, and even after his loss in Iowa, I still think that voters believe he is the winner. I think that the Santorum surge might be ending. With that being said, I think that Santorum is doing a good job with the debates, and Newt's recent scandals may help him inch ahead. I think that this win for Santorum accompanied by the recent Newt- ex-wife scandal might help him gain support and momentum.
In my opinion this turn of events means nothing. Iowa was yesterday’s news and no one cares or pays attention to any news coming out it. In our society today, it’s only the groundbreaking or first-reporter-on-the-scene news that anyone will care about. And this was such a close election that I believe almost everyone essentially viewed it as a tie. Eight votes? And now thirty-four votes? That’s closer than Florida in 2000 and I’m sure that if they did another recount in Iowa they would get a different number again.
Furthermore I completely agree with Allison in that once a candidate has the momentum it puts him at large advantage over the others, which is surely the case with Romney. Yet even with such a strong finish, resulting originally in second place, Santorum does not have momentum as we saw in the poor showings of New Hampshire and I assume we will see again in South Carolina. Even if Santorum had been pronounced the winner at the correct time, I doubt this would have changed anything at all.
I agree that this new discovery will have very little impact on both Romney and Santorum. At this point, many voters already have this image in their heads that Romney is the front-runner in the GOP race, and 34 miscounted votes will not skew that as much as some may think. Like Allison said, Romney has gained more and more momentum since the Iowa caucuses and these votes will not be enough to stop or derail his campaign in anyway. The only thing that these votes may do for Santorum is give him and his supporters a little more confidence and hope that they still have a chance in this thing. If Santorum is smart he will not harp on the fact that he actually won the caucuses, because it will make him look weak clinging to the fact that he barely squeaked out a win against Romney. It is unfortunate for Santorum that the votes were not counted correctly, but there's nothing to gain by going back to this issue. It is time to move on from Iowa and focus on the crucial upcoming states.
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