Mitt Romney eked out an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum in Iowa’s GOP caucuses early Wednesday, after a dramatic night of see-sawing leads in the first contest of the 2012 presidential campaign.
The narrow victory by the former Massachusetts governor, making his second bid for the White House, is the closest Iowa caucus result in history. Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn announced the results — 30,015 votes for Romney to Santorum’s 30,007 — hours after thousands of voters met with their friends and neighbors to render judgment on the GOP field.
“Game on,” declared Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who was lagging near the bottom of the pack just a few weeks ago.
