Ala. projected for Santorum, Miss. tight

Rick Santorum was the projected winner in Alabama\'s GOP presidential primary Tuesday and returns showed him with a narrow lead in a tight race in Mississippi. NBC News and CNN said they had projected Santorum would come out on top in Alabama once all the votes are counted. CNN said with 53 percent of the state\'s precincts reporting Santorum had 92,049 votes (35 percent) to 79,638 (30 percent) for Newt Gingrich and 74,587 (28 percent) for Mitt Romney. Ron Paul was fourth with 13,472 votes (5 percent). In Mississippi, the secretary of state\'s office said with 1,400 of 1,889 precincts (74.1 percent) reporting, Santorum led with 64,334 votes (32.8 percent) to 61,918 (31.6 percent) for Gingrich and 58,879 (30.1 percent) for Romney. Paul, again, was fourth with 8,616 votes or 4.4 percent. Mississippi\'s secretary of state said voter turnout was light in the GOP primary, and there were reports that some precincts opened late. Secretary of state spokeswoman Pamela Weaver told the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger the office had received 50 calls reporting voting problems, including delays of as much as 2 hours in opening polling locations in Hinds and Claiborne counties. Santorum, speaking on Glenn Beck\'s radio show, warned GOP voters against picking a nominee too soon. \"If we decide on a nominee next week, Barack Obama will spend the next six weeks beating the brains out of the nominee,\" Santorum said. \"There\'s an advantage of not having a nominee.\" Santorum earlier told Alabama voters to ignore predictions Romney would win the party\'s presidential nomination and vote with \"your own head.\" \"Don\'t vote with what the pundits say,\" Santorum told a rally of about 2,000 people in Birmingham. \"Vote with your own heart and your own head.\" In public-opinion polls, Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, was third in a tight three-way race heading into the two southern states. In Alabama, he was in a statistical dead heat with Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Gingrich, a former House speaker from Georgia. In Alabama, where 50 Republican National Convention delegates are at stake, a Public Policy Polling survey showed Romney ahead with 31 percent of the vote, followed by Gingrich with 30 percent, Santorum with 29 percent and Paul, the Texas congressman, with 8 percent. A separate PPP survey in Mississippi, whose primary has 40 delegates at stake, showed Gingrich ahead with 33 percent of the vote, Romney with 31 percent, Santorum with 27 percent and Paul with 7 percent. Both polls were conducted Saturday and Sunday through automated phone interviews. The margin of error was 4 points in Alabama and 3.8 points in Mississippi. The Hawaii and American Samoa Republican caucuses were also being held Tuesday, with Romney widely expected to win those contests. Romney, who celebrated his 65th birthday Monday, suggested to Alabama supporters a Southern primary victory would be the perfect birthday present. \"Thanks so much for giving me this birthday present. Hopefully, I can unwrap it tomorrow,\" he told a crowd at Mobile\'s Whistle Stop restaurant Monday. He later told the Fox News Channel despite what Santorum told NBC\'s \"Meet the Press\" Sunday, \"We\'re closing the deal, state by state, delegate by delegate. \"I guess two, two-and-a-half times as many delegates as he has, about the same number of state advantages that he has, many more Republican voters than he has,\" Romney said, comparing his status with that of Santorum. Romney has 454 delegates, Santorum 217, Gingrich 107 and Paul 47. A candidate must accumulate 1,144 delegates by the August GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., to clinch the nomination. Gingrich, born in Harrisburg, Pa., but making the South his home ever since high school, mocked Romney\'s newfound taste for grits Monday after pointing out he lived in Columbus, Ga., \"right next to Alabama,\" and taught at West Georgia College \"right next to Alabama.\" \"I kind of feel relatively at home here,\" Gingrich told a Birmingham crowd. \"In fact, this morning when I had grits, I thought it was a very normal thing to do.\" Gingrich said Obama\'s press secretary \"basically attacked me\" Monday for promising to cut the price of gasoline to $2.50 a gallon if he became president. Gingrich quoted White House spokesman Jay Carney as saying Obama would not \"look the American people in the eye and claim that there is a strategy by which he can guarantee the price of gas will be $2.50 at the pump.\" \"Any politician who does that is lying,\" Carney said, \"because that strategy does not exist. It is a simple fact that there is no such plan that can guarantee the price of oil or the price at the pump.\" Gingrich said, \"I have suggested that if we developed our energy capacity to the degree we could, that that would bring down the price of gasoline on the theory that supply and demand works -- and this is not something that Obama is very used to.\" Paul is focusing on the caucus states. He won the popular vote in the U.S. Virgin Islands Saturday but lost to Romney in the delegate count. \"The delegate hunt is on,\" Paul told reporters as he campaigned over the weekend. His campaign promised another \"massive town hall\" in Illinois Wednesday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ahead of next week\'s Illinois primary. Many of Paul\'s biggest events have been at colleges.