Mitt Romney has won the Iowa Republican caucus ahead of Rick Santorum by the narrowest of margins - eight votes.
Romney polled 30,015 votes. Total votes cast were 122,255. The total population of the State of Iowa was estimated by the US Census Bureau in July 2011 as 3,062,309. If one asumes that roughly half the population is entitled to vote in the presidential election, approximately 2 per cent of the electorate have just given their backing to Mitt Romney.
Republicans, we are told, seem set to save Obama's bacon by choosing from a pool of candidates that neither they in general, nor the country as a whole finds very attractive. Yet much may change in the outside world between now and the election.
