Iowa

DES MOINES - Mitt Romney narrowly defeated a surging Rick Santorum by just eight votes in the Iowa Republican caucuses Tuesday as voters rendered the first verdict of the 2012 presidential campaign. It was a chaotic kickoff after a year of campaigning that featured a rotating group of front-runners, and suggested a party deeply divided as it prepares to take on President Obama. At 2:34 a.m. EST, the Iowa Republican chairman Matt Strawn declared Romney the winner - putting him past Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, by all of eight votes.

WASHINGTON - Inserting his voice into a big night for Republicans, President Obama appealed to Iowa Democrats on Tuesday during the first balloting in the GOP presidential campaign, seeking to counter months of withering criticism in the state that launched his presidential ambitions four years ago. Obama told party activists in a live video teleconference that because of their support, the Iraq war ended, a health-care overhaul was signed into...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were bunched together atop the field in nearly complete returns from the Iowa Republican caucuses Tuesday as voters rendered the first verdict of the 2012 presidential campaign. It was a chaotic kickoff after a year of campaigning that featured a rotating group of front-runners, and it suggested a party deeply divided as it prepares to take on President Obama. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and investment banker, is a favorite of the party establishment and argues he is most electable.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Was it a three-way tie, a photo finish or a flat-out win for the redoubtable Rick Santorum? However the final Iowa caucus numbers read, the former Pennsylvania senator's showing far exceeded what many of his top staffers, jubilant at the Stony Creek Inn here Tuesday night, could have dreamed of six years before. That was when Santorum had lost his Senate seat by 18 percentage points to Democrat Bob Casey. Fast-forward to the Stony Creek Inn, where those same loyalists had cause to celebrate after months of struggling in rural Iowa just to gain attention.

For much of 2011, the GOP presidential hopefuls criss-crossed the cornfields of the American heartland - veering away from the middle-of-the-road as they quarreled over who would be quicker to drop bombs on Iran or just how out-of-touch with American values they believed President Obama to be. Now Iowa is finally in the rear-view mirror - and the race for the Republican nomination is about to take a hard right turn. Tuesday night's early Iowa-caucus returns showed a three-way virtual dead heat for the top spot among former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, riding a huge last-minute evangelical turnout; the youth-backed libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and the well-funded candidate of GOP insiders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

YOU KNOW what they always say - when things are going really good, they name a chicken salad after you. Indeed, these are the chicken-salad days for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, whose rapid rise to here from obscurity in the Iowa caucus polls was celebrated yesterday when the popular Pizza Ranch outlet in Boone, Iowa, renamed an in-house creation its "Santorum Salad. " Just two weeks ago, there weren't many "naming opportunities" for a stalwart GOP culture warrior who was rejected by Keystone State voters in a landslide five years ago and then seemed mired in Iowa's single digits despite all but moving to the nation's first caucus state.

WALFORD, Iowa - So far, a series of 13 televised debates has driven the storylines of the Republican presidential race, and on Monday the six major candidates each traveled hundreds of miles for a last burst of the retail campaigning that has earned this state its place at the head of the nominating process. Yet in the end, what happens in Tuesday night's Iowa caucuses may be determined as much as anything by a deluge of negative television ads over the last two weeks, the nastiest media war in the memory of many political analysts and operatives here.

WASHINGTON - Democrats, too, will caucus in Iowa on Tuesday night. But for Team Obama, the meetings of party activists are all about November. As the GOP sorts through its choices in the Republican caucuses, President Obama will be engaging directly with Iowa Democrats to try to rally his base in a state that is also a key general-election battleground. Turnout for the Democratic caucuses is expected to be far lower than the nearly 240,000 who turned out in 2008, when Iowa Democrats handed Obama a surprise victory that set him on the path to the White House.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wept Friday as he recalled his late mother's end-of-life illnesses, a moment of poignancy in a notably negative Republican presidential Iowa caucus campaign. "I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich told an audience of women as he tried to regain his composure. The tears flowed as the former speaker was responding to questions about his mother from a pollster and longtime political ally. Gingrich's emotional moment came as his rivals engaged in traditional campaign tactics, and as polls suggested large numbers of Iowa Republicans could change their minds before caucuses Tuesday night provide the first test of the 2012 campaign.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - An icy wind scoured the parking lot of the Hy-Vee supermarket, ruffling Mitt Romney's perfect hair as he urged about 500 rain-soaked people to stand up for him in Tuesday's Republican caucuses. "I need your help, you guys," Romney said Friday over the gale. "This is a real battle - it's a battle for the future course of America. I don't want politicians running America anymore. I want to make sure that we have citizen leaders going to Washington . . . fighting for the soul of this great country.