Romney heavily favored to win Nevada caucuses

Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney jumped to a strong lead Saturday in the Nevada caucuses, reaching for a second straight campaign victory over a field of rivals suddenly struggling to keep pace. Unlike contentious earlier events from Iowa to Florida, the Nevada contest produced little television advertising, no candidate debates and only a modest investment of time by the candidates. Returns from five of 17 counties showed the former Massachusetts governor gaining 38 percent of the vote in a state where fellow Mormons turned out in heavy numbers. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was running second with 30 percent, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 20 percent and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum with 13 percent. In 2008, Romney was victorious in the caucuses thanks in part to overwhelming support from his fellow Mormons. Preliminary results of a poll of Nevada Republicans entering their caucuses showed that nearly half said the most important consideration in their decision was a candidate’s ability to defeat Obama this fall, a finding in line with other states. The entrance poll was conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press at 25 randomly selected caucus sites. It included 1,553 interviews and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Apart from Romney, who won the Florida primary on Tuesday, Paul was the only contender to make a significant effort in Nevada, while Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Santorum invested little in time or money. Romney campaigned Saturday in Colorado, but was planning to return to Nevada for Saturday night party at a casino a few miles (kilometers) from the Las Vegas Strip. In a sign that he expects to lose, Romney’s chief rival Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, planned to issue a simple statement on the outcome instead of holding the traditional candidate party with supporters. A total of 28 Republican National Convention delegates was at stake in caucuses held across a sprawling state that drew little attention in the nominating campaign, but figures to be a fierce battleground in the fall between the winner of the Republican nomination and President Barack Obama. The state’s unemployment rate was measured at 12.6 percent in December, the worst in the U.S. According to the AP count, Romney began the day with 87 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Gingrich had 26, Santorum 14 and Paul 4. Polls show Romney with a double-digit lead in Nevada. He hopes to keep momentum on his side in upcoming contests on Tuesday in Colorado and Minnesota, two other states he won in 2008, and later in February in his home state of Michigan. By the time Nevada Republicans caucused, Paul was campaigning in Minnesota, Santorum in Colorado. Gingrich combined campaigning and fundraising in his time in Nevada, in hopes of righting a campaign that was victorious in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21, only to crater 10 days later in Florida under an avalanche of negative TV ads by Romney and his supporters. Just one debate is planned this month, which diminishes the chances that Gingrich can revive his candidacy once again with a highly publicized head-on challenge. Gingrich chose to spend much of his time hammering home his latest argument against a Romney presidency — that there is virtually no difference between the former Massachusetts governor and Obama. “It isn’t good enough for the Republican Party to nominate Obama lite,” Gingrich told a boisterous crowd at a rally at country music club on Friday. He said Romney is against the “American ideal” and doesn’t understand the free market. Romney ignored his chief rival, instead projecting himself as the likely Republican nominee and focusing his attack on Obama. He accused the president of failing to do enough to create jobs as he campaigned in a state with sky-high unemployment and foreclosure rates. Romney sought to convince weary voters that he alone had the prescriptions for what ails the country — even as the government reported that a quarter-million Americans streamed back into the workforce in January and unemployment tumbled to 8.3 percent. That was almost the same rate it was right after Obama took office, when a monstrous recession was gobbling up American jobs. Hiring is now on a consistent upswing and employers added nearly twice as many jobs last year as they did in 2010.