Rick Santorum picked up a solid win in the caucus in conservative Kansas on Saturday, keeping him in contention in the Republican presidential contest on the heels of frontrunner Mitt Romney.
In the latest contest of the rollercoaster Republican presidential race, Christian conservative Santorum won Kansas after Romney took sweeping wins thousands of miles away in Pacific US territories Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
"I congratulate Rick Santorum on winning the Kansas caucus. I also thank all of our candidates for their dedication to ending Barack Obama's failed presidency," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.
Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley said: "We are very pleased to see the Santorum surge sweeping through the Jayhawk State. This is a great win for the campaign and further evidence that conservatives and Tea Party loyalists are uniting behind Rick as the true, consistent conservative in this race."
Former Pennsylvania senator Santorum won handily with 51.2 percent of the vote, compared with 21 percent for Romney, 14.2 percent for former House speaker Newt Gingrich, and 12.6 percent for congressman Ron Paul, final results showed.
While Romney is the national frontrunner, there is still no definitive candidate to take on Democratic President Barack Obama in the November election. With Kansas in Santorum's column, the focus moves to the Deep South with contests Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi.
Romney earned a slight nudge earlier Saturday, announcing he won all nine delegates in Guam, as well as the nine in the Northern Marianas.
Voters in the US Virgin Islands were also due to select their favored Republican candidate on Saturday, and Romney was expected to do well there also.
But ultraconservative Kansas was an unlikely match for him -- the former governor of liberal Massachusetts stayed away, focusing instead on the Tuesday primaries.
Though Romney consolidated his pole position in this week's slew of votes, he failed to knock either Santorum or Gingrich out of the race. Paul, a Libertarian Texas representative, is also hanging on, though he has yet to win a single contest.
Romney leads the pack overall, having won more than a third of the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination, after 25 contests in the state-by-state Republican race.
Santorum is expected to get the majority of Kansas delegates based on the state's allocation formula, but Romney may get a handful as well.
Big prizes are at stake on Tuesday, when Alabama, with 50 delegates, Mississippi (40) and Hawaii (20) go to the polls.
"Santorum's social conservatism would be expected to play well with Deep Southern voters," Charles Franklin, co-founder of pollster.com and a professor at Marquette University Law School, told AFP.
"But, stylistically, Gingrich with his long history in the South maybe is a little more appealing than Santorum's Yankee charm from Pennsylvania."
Two small polls released Friday predicted a tight race in Alabama between Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, narrowly giving the edge to Gingrich, who has said Alabama and Mississippi are "must wins" for him.
Former Alabama governor Fob James endorsed Gingrich, saying, "I am certain that Newt is the man to return our country to sound fiscal policy, real solutions for abundant American energy, and to defend religious liberty."
In Mississippi a poll by Rasmussen Reports gave Romney 35 percent support, with Santorum and Gingrich both on 27 percent.
But Troy Gibson, associate professor of political science at the University of Southern Mississippi, said he thought a Romney win there was unlikely.
"I just don't think he has the enthusiastic base that he would need to pull those out," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/republican-race-moves-us-conservative-heartland-034653406.html
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