Santorum wins two US primaries
Republican Rick Santorum wins US primaries in Alabama and Mississippi piling pressure on main rival Mitt Romney in the race to take on Barack Obama.
“We did it again,” Santorum told his cheering supporters in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Mitt Romney, the front runner for the Republican nomination was running third in both states.
Santorum said it was time for conservatives to unite in an effort to defeat Romney: “We will compete everywhere, we will compete everywhere.
“The time is now for conservatives to pull together. The time is now to make sure, to make sure that we have the best chance to win this election, and the best chance to win this election is to nominate a conservative to go up against Barack Obama who can take him on on every issue”
But it was Gingrich with the most to lose as he struggled for political survival in a part of the country he hoped would fuel one more comeback in the unpredictable race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama.
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He congratulated Santorum on his victories, and poked at Romney.
“If you’re the front-runner and you keep coming in third, you’re not much of a front-runner,” he said in Birmingham, Alabama.
There were 107 Republican National Convention delegates at stake on Tuesday, 47 in Alabama, 37 in Mississippi, 17 in Hawaii caucuses and six more in caucuses in American Samoa.
Santorum’s two victories were worth at least 27 delegates.
Gingrich won at least 20 and Romney at least 18.
The split underscored the difficulty that Romney’s rivals face in overcoming his big lead.
The partial allocation of delegates from the primary states left Romney with 472 in The Associated Press count, with 454 of the 1,144 needed to win the nomination.
Santorum had 244, Gingrich 127 and Ron Paul 47.
That gave the former Massachusetts governor more than his rivals combined.
And while Santorum in particular challenges the mathematical projections, Romney is amassing delegates at a rate that puts him on track to clinch control of nomination before the convention next summer.
In Alabama on Tuesday night, with 80 per cent of the precincts counted, Santorum was pulling 35 percent of the vote, Gingrich had 29 per cent
and Romney 28 per cent.
Returns from 93 per cent of Mississippi’s precincts showed Santorum with 33 per cent, Gingrich 31 per cent and Romney 30.