Santorum Wins Kansas; Romney Gets Wyoming
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum swept the Kansas caucuses, while front-runner Mitt Romney won the Wyoming caucuses Saturday – days before next week's crucial Southern primaries.
With 51 percent of the votes, former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum scored an easy win in Kansas. Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney got 21 percent of the votes, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was at 14 percent. However, Romney won seven of the 12 delegates at stake in Wyoming. Santorum got three and Texas Rep. Ron Paul received just one.
"Things have an amazing way of working out," The Associated Press quoted Santorum as saying to his supporters in Missouri. He said his performance in Kansas was a "comfortable win" that would give him the vast majority of the 40 delegates at stake.
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Santorum got 33 of the state's 40 delegates at stake, making a minor dent on Romney's advantage.
The two contests on Saturday left Romney with 454 delegates, Santorum with 217, Gingrich with 107 and Paul with 47. The primaries to be held in Mississippi and Alabama on Tuesday appear to be potentially decisive in who gets the Republican presidential nomination, for which a candidate will have to win 1,144.
The American Research Group survey of 600 likely Republican primary voters in Mississippi, released Friday, showed Gingrich with 35 percent support, while Romney had 31 percent, Santorum was at 20 percent and Paul had 7 percent.
According to an automated Rasmussen poll of 750 likely Republican primary voters in Alabama, Gingrich had support of 30 percent of the voters, followed by Santorum with 29 percent, Romney with 28 percent and Paul with 7 percent.
Many conservatives feel Gingrich should pull out of the race to allow Santorum to be the sole challenger to Romney. However, Gingrich said Friday he would remain in the race. "I think there's a fair chance we'll win. But I just want to set this to rest once and for all. We're going to Tampa."
Santorum Friday took aim at both President Barack Obama and Gingrich, saying, "We already have one president who doesn't tell the truth to the American people. We don't need another." He was quoted as saying that he was confident "that we can win Kansas on Saturday and come into Alabama and Mississippi, and this race should come down to two people."
