Republican primary race heads to Massachusetts after Romney Iowa win

The campaign for the Republican Party’s candidate in this year’s US presidential election moved to New Hampshire Wednesday after former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney scored a wafer-thin win over ex-Senator Rick Santorum in the first primary.

Reuters/Brian Snyder

Romney won by just eight out of 120,000 votes in the Iowa primary election, a hotly fought contest that saw the candidates invest roughly 200 dollars (153 euros) per voter, according to David Goodner of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement campaign.

But opinion polls give Romney a safe lead at the moment with Santorum trailing behind, Texas Representative Ron Paul, former ambassador to China John Huntsman and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

All that could change, however, if the polls are to be believed, since they show one-third of likely voters are undecided.

Romney begins a bus tour on Wednesday and 400 volunteers will arrive from nearby states on Saturday to help the campaign.

The vote takes place on 10 January.

Santorum, a Catholic, picked up support from Christian conservatives suspicious of Romney’s Mormonism and his contradictory positions on social issues in Iowa.

But religion is likely to play a lesser role in New Hampshire, one of US’s least religious states, according to a 2009 Gallup surveys.

Santorum also won the support of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who took to twitter on Monday to praise him as the “only candidate with genuine big vision for country”.