Rick Santorum's belated Iowa win: Too late to matter?

Turns out Santorum actually edged out Mitt Romney in the first contest of the GOP's nominating season. How does the final count affect the race?

Rick Santorum
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sorry, Mitt: Looks like you didn't win the Iowa caucuses, after all. According to the state GOP's final count, released Thursday, Rick Santorum came out 34 votes ahead of Mitt Romney, instead of eight votes behind as originally reported. (One caveat: The ballots from eight precincts are missing, so the party is technically calling it a Romney-Santorum tie.) If Santorum had been declared the winner on election night, could he have parlayed the victory into even more momentum and become the consensus non-Romney — preventing Mitt from taking such a commanding early lead?

This proves Romney isn't inevitable: Pundits were "singing the inevitability of Mitt Romney because for the first time in history a single candidate won both Iowa and New Hampshire in an open race," says William A. Jacobson in Legal Insurrection. Now we have proof that "the narrative was stupid." The news of Santorum's apparent victory deprives Romney of an "effective tool" he used to win over reluctant voters — and proves he isn't the inevitable GOP nominee.

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