Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote lead in the Iowa caucuses, reversing the 8-point margin for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney that had been reported in the small hours of the morning of Jan. 4. But Iowa Republican officials are still calling the results a tie, in that the official tallies from eight precincts are still missing from the certified count completed two weeks after the 1,774 precincts reported. Mr. Santorum claimed victory on Twitter. “Thank you Iowa for the win!” read a tweet from the official @RickSantorum account. “I encourage enveryone to join our fight in South Carolina! Game on!”
The new numbers don’t change the race in any objective way. The Iowa GOP caucuses are a beauty contest that do not control the award of the state’s delegates. But the news, first reported by the Des Moines Register, gives Mr. Santorum at least a psychic boost as three days before the crucial South Carolina primary. And they rob Mr. Romney, whose lead here is under spirited assault from Newt Gingrich and Mr. Santorum, of the bragging rights of being able to claim that he was the only non-incumbent ever to win both the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. The news came just hours before Texas Gov. Rick Perry was to hold a news conference, where, according to a Wall St. Journal report, he would withdraw from the race, a development that could further jeopardize Mr. Romney’s advantage by reducing the division among more conservative voters.
The newly certified Iowa numbers found 29,839 caucus votes for Mr. Santorum and 29,805 for Mr. Romney. The Register reported that “GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally.”
Full Article: Recount shows Santorum won in Iowa, but officials call it a tie.