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newt gingrich is a distant fourth, only 13%, only 13,000 votes. rick perry, about 10%, 10,000 votes. michele bachmann, 5%, about 5,000 votes. jon huntsman at 1% of the votes. let's go to erick and gloria. what's going on over here? you're looking closely at these numbers. santorum was ahead, now slightly, slightly, mitt romney ahead. >> we've been looking as it's flip-flopped around, and each of the leaders and why. now let's look at mitt romney and where his strength is coming from. two things we want to hone in on. we asked people, what's the most important candidate quality, can defeat obama. 31% of the caucusgoers told us that was the most important thing. true conservative, 25%. i'm going to tell you right now, those voters went overwhelmingly for ron paul. strong moral character, a quarter of voters said that was most important. and i'll tell you right now,
issues. that's what driving him in iowa. >> here's the fundamental truth that's drove this entire republican race for mitt romney. as long as there's a multiple number of candidates in the field, mitt romney divides and conquers. that is the whole issue. if it comes down to one candidate against mitt romney, particularly in south carolina, one candidate could beat him. but i don't see any scenario where it's a one-on-one in south carolina. >> this thing saturday night, this debate, i wouldn't -- i'm not going to miss the saints game, but i'm going to come back and get some snippets of it. this is going to be a big deal, because gingrich is going to be smoking mad, they're going to all be facing each other, and it's going to have some kind of determination. because these people in new hampshire are going to be watching this. by the way, i agree with you, they're going to tear the bark off of santorum when this thing comes down. >> he's got to be a much better debater. he debates as a mean, whiney guy, so he's got to improve on that. >> if there's one thing we learned, always talking about mitt romney, how he was not going to do well with social
that that tough rhetoric continues now and just amplifies in the days ahead? or do they take a step back somehow? >> yeah, absolutely. i think it continues. i think they get into south carolina now. forget new hampshire. they go to south carolina and it gets uglier. and south carolina is always ugly. let's not forget what happened to nikki haley when she ran two years ago. south carolina is historically ugly. it's going to be real ugly. but there's a sense of blood in the water from a lot of conservative activists tonight, online and offline, that mitt romney spent a lot of money in 2008, he spent a lot of money this time and he hasn't really moved his number. if anything, it's gone down a little bit. conservative activists are thinking, maybe now people will realize, this isn't the guy we want. they're just not sure that santorum is the way we want to go to. >> erick, you've been tough on santorum over the last couple of weeks, reading your tweets. what do you make of his numbers tonight and what does this mean movieing forward? >> it means he was the last man standing after all the other candidates were vetted. i think what's happening with ron paul tonight, because of iowa in general, the way it's
let me update you right now on what's going on. these are official votes, because 88% of the precincts have now reported. and look at how close it is. rick santorum, look at this, he's 13 votes ahead of mitt romney, 26,552 to 26,539. both 25%. ron paul is coming in a distant third. not necessarily a distant third, but a significant third, 22,821, with 21%. newt gingrich, esi should say, a distant fourth, 13%, 14,300 or so. rick perry, he's 10% with 11,100. michele bachmann, 5,500, only 5%. jon huntsman, 1%. those are the official numbers with 88% of the precincts reporting.
texas congressman not all that far behind. still 12% of the precincts outstanding. but this is close, close, close. let's take a look at the headquarters of these three candidates right now. romney headquarters, the place is full. believe in america. they're standing there, they're watching tv. if they're hearing me say anything, go ahead and wave to that cnn screen, because i'm waving at you. mitt romney folks over there in the headquarters, take a look at rick santorum headquarters, faith, family, freedom, they're waving over there as well. rick santorum headquarters, they're going to wait and hear from rick santorum. all of these candidates will eventually speak. ron paul, store america now. take a look at this, ron paul headquarters, they've got balloons ready to go. he's coming in, he's running a slight third right now, but let's go back to romney headquarters. they're waving. you know why they're waving? because they're watching us. i'm waving at you guys right now as well. the mitt romney folks. this is a close race between mitt romney and rick santorum.
tonight. >> i've got to push back a little bit, ari, i love your tie, but a couple things push me wrong there. if you are rick santorum, south carolina, january 21st, florida, january 31st, nevada, february 4th. you look at the poll numbers, how well mitt romney is doing in new hampshire. clearly, you want to focus and put out your economic message when it comes to new hampshire, but this is also a matter of strategy. if you're rick santorum, you want to be able to make a play in those other three states. it's not necessarily all about, i need to quickly make something happen next week, because you have to say, wait a minute, i could potentially be the guy who is the anti-romney. so he focused on iowa. he said, i need to do well here. he's done that. he now can have a longer strategy -- >> but he's not the only guy who wants to be the anti-romney. >> he's not going to be able to -- >> but if perry's 10% tonight -- >> there's no way he can. he can start fund-raising off of iowa immediately, but he has no apparatus outside of iowa.
>> i keep moving around here. very dynamic night here. the map is starting to populate in terms of the population centers. what are we seeing now? >> what we're seeing is, a, more of the counties filling in. this part of the state is very important. again, the split. four years ago, this was mike huckabee country. one county for romney, country county for romney here. this is your tea party evangelical vote. mike huckabee took it all four years ago. we've got a split. the lighter pink is ron paul, the dark red is mitt romney, the purple is rick santorum. we have a three-way race here. earlier i told you michele bachmann was winning one county. that was this county up here, howard county. rick santorum now has the lead there with 80% of the vote counted. michele bachmann is on track right now to not even win one iowa county. newt gingrich is carrying this county up here right now, 50% of the vote in. but as you can see, pretty close. we'll watch the vote come in. anderson, right now, almost half of the precincts counted. you've got this tiny lead. we'll watch this play out. when you have such a big race, you have to focus on the big
high turnout, we have a big intensity gap this time? many democrats will say no, many republicans will say, it's an improvement. one other point i want talk about. if we have a close race, i want to look at candidate visits. let's close this down, take away the graphics. this is rick santorum, he visited all 99 counties. look at him out in the western part of the state that mitt romney carried four years ago. let's look at mitt romney, he visited this area the least. of the candidates who visited iowa in this cycle, it was romney the least. santorum tonight is going to claim doing it the old-fashioned bay has helped. if you close this down and just come back and look, we're filling in the map at 88%. wow. just wow. and we're going to look at who's left. you look at these open counties, there's no votes here, tiny counties. they could make a difference. in a very close race, they could make difference.
population centers. by iowa standards, that means here, polk county. only 30% of the vote counted right here, ron paul is winning, but by the tie nest margin, mitt romney not that far behind. this is where the most votes are still outstanding tonight, in the center of the state, by the state capital. duh buick, about 44% of the vote counted. one of the things we'll do throughout the night, romney tonight, match it up to romney four years ago. he had 42% there four years ago, just 33% now. he neds eds to continue to lead this county if he wants to pull this one out. another population center, davenport and cedar rapids here. here is our biggest question still remaining tonight. in the western part of the state, look at the open areas right here. this is a very conservative part of the state, and right here, these are mostly small counties, half a percent, 1 percent of the vote. but right here, where sioux city is, woodbury county, 3.5% of the population. you watch the western part fill in, if the margins stay the same, and all these counties here, we're at 46%, if the
does soishl media count? where these results are right now, they're between 100, 200. that's where organization comes in. and that's what we did. we'd be focused on sitting in those caucuses going, we didn't turn out 20 voters here. >> reporter: mary matalin, donna brazile, we'll be back with you. but right now we want to throw it back to wolf. >> thanks very much, candy. we've got more official votes in. almost half of the precincts have now reported, 46%. and all of a sudden rick santorum is slightly atop the field with 24%. he's 162 votes ahead of mitt romney, 12,417 for rick santorum, 12,255 for mitt romney. ron paul is now third, 22%, 11,238. newt gingrich, look at this, a distant fourth, only 6,788 votes, 13%. if we move to the bottom three, you see rick perry with just more than 5,000 votes, 10%. almost 3,000 votes for michele bachmann, 6%. 300 or so votes for jon