Republican Santorum takes Mississippi in second win

Mar 14, 2012 |

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In his second victory of the night on Tuesday, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum was seen to have squeaked a win in Mississippi's tight Republican presidential primary.

US television networks Fox and CNN called the race for Santorum in the southern state with some 96 percent of the vote counted. The results gave him a knife-edge lead of 33 percent over Newt Gingrich, who was on 31 percent with 30 percent for Mitt Romney.

Santorum's win in Mississippi came hot on the heels of a victory in neighboring Alabama, where Romney was also projected to have slipped into third place behind Gingrich.

It was a bad night for both Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and former House speaker Gingrich.

Front-runner Romney had been hoping to prove that he can win in conservative states and lock down the Republican party's nomination to take on President Barack Obama in the November election.

Gingrich had also been hoping to shore up his flagging campaign with a win in the deep South and the results will likely boost the pressure on him to withdraw from the race and let conservatives rally behind Santorum.

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