Rick Santorum appears to have come out ahead in the Iowa caucuses by 34 votes, but state party officials have decided the results will remain officially inconclusive because the tallies from eight precincts are missing.
The Iowa Republican Party is reporting that Santorum garnered 29,839 votes while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished with 29,805 votes.
Romney appeared to win the Jan. 3 caucuses, edging out Santorum by just eight votes in unofficial tallies.
Now, Republican officials are calling it a split decision.
The news will give Santorum something to talk about on the campaign trail in South Carolina this week, but few are expecting the news to provide the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania the kind of substantial lift he needs right now to remain a viable candidate.
Santorum is trailing badly in the Palmetto State polls after a poor finish in New Hampshire. He’s in fourth place behind Romney, Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul, with about 13 percent of the vote according to a Real Clear Politics average.
The updated Iowa results are not expected to substantially damage Romney, particularly since he originally intended not to compete in the Hawkeye State and then exceeded expectations there after deciding to campaign there at the last minute.
“Romney’s squeaker non-win in Iowa shouldn’t cause us to forget that through 2011 most expected him to finish third or worse,” conservative columnist David Frum said on Twitter after the Iowa GOP released the new results.
Romney’s camp downplayed the Iowa results.
“The results from Iowa caucus night revealed a virtual tie,” Romney said in the statement Thursday.
But the apparent loss takes away Romney’s history-making win in the first two voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which he won easily on Jan. 10.
Josh Putnam, a political science professor at Davidson College, who specializes in campaigns and elections, told The Washington Examiner that South Carolina’s results are what will matter now, followed by Florida’s primary vote next week.
“I doubt very seriously that many South Carolina or Florida voters will change their votes based on the change in Iowa,” said Putnam, author of the primary blog Frontloading HQ.
If anything, analysts said, the inconclusive results and missing ballots may hurt Iowa’s standing as an early decider in the primary process.
