Mitt Romney might not actually have won Iowa

Rick Santorum.

Mitt Romney's emergence as the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination has been driven by his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in the nominating calendar.

But we may find out on Friday that Romney didn't actually win Iowa.

In the early hours of January 4, Romney was declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes: He took 30,015 to 30,007 for runner-up Rick Santorum. Iowa GOP officials said there would not be a recount, and the results were largely treated as settled.

But as Byron York of the Washington Examiner noted Monday, the results were not actually final. The caucus night results were based on phone calls into the state party. But officials also filled out written records of the vote totals, which they had two weeks to mail into the state party. It is based on those documents - not the phone calls - that the results are certified.

The Iowa GOP told CBS News Political Hotsheet Tuesday that the deadline for those written records is tomorrow. A spokesperson said the party expects to make a final announcement of the certified results by the end of the week - most likely on Friday.

Don't be surprised if the certified results don't match the caucus night vote count. As York notes, 2008 Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee ended up with 113 more votes in the certified results than he did in the initial results; runner-up Romney ended up with 72 more votes in the certified results. Santorum would only need a net gain of nine votes over Romney to be declared the real winner of this year's contest; an unnamed campaign source told York that Santorum was up 80 votes as of midday Monday.

The Iowa caucuses are an overhyped event that don't actually reward any binding delegates - but because the candidates and media focus so much on them, they have a powerful impact on the race anyway, and candidates who do well getting a boost in momentum and fundraising. Romney's supposed victory gave him a boost heading into New Hampshire, and that contest might have gone differently had he not been declared the winner in Iowa. By the same token, Santorum might have seen a bigger boost had he been able to claim a clear victory as opposed to a close-second place finish.

Santorum, who is hoping to consolidate enough conservative support to beat Romney in Saturday's South Carolina primary, said Tuesday he hopes to be declared the winner in Iowa.

"It'd be awesome to find out now that I won that state," he said. "What better time to get a little bump in winning Iowa."

The better time to have gotten the bump was probably right after the caucuses, before Romney started looking all-but-inevitable as the GOP nominee. But if Santorum is declared the Iowa winner on Friday - just one day before the Palmetto state primary - it could help swing some late-deciding voters in his direction.

[valwayne]

Governor Romney won Iowa, I watched them announce he won! And then he won New Hampshire, and that was by a huge margin, not 9 votes. If they come out on Friday and tell us that oops....we now show that Sen Santorum has a few more votes the only thing that will tell us is that Iowa can't count, they really don't know who won, will never know for sure who won, and Iowa doesn't deserve its spot as the first state launching the primary season. In 2016 we need a competent state that's willing to commit to an accurate vote count to start off the season. If you can't do it right, you don't have the right to do it at all!

[rezin1]

The night before voting in South Carolina, the media will declare Santorum the actual winner.

The media and the est. Repubs hope to boost Santorum, continue splitting the vote and prevent Gingrich from stopping Mittens.

[danram69]

Whether or not Romney actually "won" Iowa is totally irrelevant. The significant thing is that a moderate republican like Romney finished at or near the top in a far right state like Iowa, even though he had put very little effort into the state until the last month of the campaign. In effect, he beat the spread. So whether he ended up winning or losing the Iowa caucuses by a handful of votes, it doesn't matter.

[mm334]

When I heard the news only 8 votes got Mitt the Iowa caucus, thought it should be a review on actualvotes with such a close margin. 8 votes hardly mattered who won actually, seems more like a tie, than a winner. In fact I thought it was a waste of time and money with a poor result. Of course no one knew that prior to the caucus in Iowa.

[Jaylah54]

Of course, Iowa news sources were reporting this just a couple of days (at most) after the caucus. One of the precinct vote counters caught the fact that a vote count of 2 was incorrectly reported as "22."

At first, the Iowa GOP refused to acknowledge the error. I know for a fact (because I sent links to the local reports to CBS) that CBS was aware of the controversy as soon as it surfaced. But CBS chose to say nothing about it until the Iowa GOP was forced to admit the mistake.

For those of us in Iowa, this is seriously old news.

[stjjds]

Ron Paul would win South Carolina and the nomination, if he would CLEARLY link the trillion dollar savings from ending U.S. foreign wars with financing Social Security. He alludes to that sometimes but does not CLEARLY and REPEATEDLY state so in his ads or debates. Trillions were borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund to fight wars overseas for many years and paying this money back, with interest, by ending the wars would make Social Security solvent forever.

[nancy_naive]

This Caucus brought to you by the Party that claims our elections are eff'ed up and that they know how to fix them...

[occupy_cbs]

Every single one of these 2012 GOP clowns is proposing the same failed economic policies -- more tax cuts, more deregulation and less oversight:

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, explained in an op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse," exactly how the economic decisions of the GOP over the past 40 years, is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream.

[Kidnkorner]

It doesn't matter who "won," Actually nobody "won" the top 3 places all got 6 delegates a piece

[bobnjersey]

[it could help swing some late-deciding voters in his direction.]
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how could anyone not be decided on who they're going to vote for ... except for those that just want to vote for who they think is going to win?