LAS VEGAS: Republican front-runner Mitt Romney cruised to an easy victory in Nevada, crushing his three remaining rivals and taking firm command of the party’s volatile presidential nominating race.
With support from a broad cross-section of Republicans, Romney won by a big double-digit margin over former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Representative Ron Paul and former Senator Rick Santorum on Saturday.
The victory was Romney’s second in a row and his third in the first five contests in the state-by-state battle to find a Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in November’s general election.
It propels Romney into the next contests – in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri on Tuesday – on a growing wave of momentum.
Gingrich held a news conference after the results to head off speculation that he might put an early end to his campaign.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, took control of the Nevada contest early after recapturing his front-runner status with a convincing win over Gingrich in Florida last Tuesday. He benefited from a huge financial and organizational edge in Nevada, which he won with 51 percent of the vote during his failed 2008 presidential bid. A faltering economy and a big bloc of Mormon voters made Nevada friendly terrain for Romney, a Mormon and former head of a private equity firm.
Romney stressed his business background as a cure for the state’s ailing economy, which suffers from the country’s highest unemployment rate, 12.6 percent in December, and the highest home foreclosure rate.
Entrance polls in Nevada showed that was a persuasive argument, with the economy ranking as the top issue and Romney winning nearly two-thirds of the voters who listed it as their biggest concern.
‘America needs a president who can fix the economy because he understands the economy, and I do and I will,’ Romney told cheering supporters. (UNI)