In Iowa Caucuses, Romney Edges Santorum By Narrowest of Margins

Only eight votes separated the two GOP frontrunners

When the bell rang after the twelfth and final round, both men were still standing, their arms thrust in the proverbial air, having declared victory in the first race on the road to be the Republican candidate for president.

Now it's onto New Hampshire.

Rick Santorum, the former high-ranking U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, got 30,007 votes, or 25 percent as opposed to 30,015 for Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucuses, it was announced early Wednesday. Romney technically won by eight votes

“Game on!” Santorum told giddy supporters when it was certain that he had fought the frontrunner to a draw, even as a long road lay ahead of him in New Hampshire, where Romney enjoys a large lead in the polls.

Santorum was poised and emotional as he thanked his wife and invoked the name of his three-year-old daughter, Isabella, who has a chronic disability. Santorum also laid out his populist message and humble beginnings, a message that resonated with Iowa voters.

"We feel it's been a great victory for us tonight,” Romney said at the beginning of a freelancing, sometimes meandering speech in which he repeatedly bashed President Barack Obama. When it came to running the country, Obama was “in over his head,” Romney said.

Other candidates did not fair as well as they had hoped.

"I've decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race,” said Rick Perry, who received 12,604 votes, or 11 percent.

Michelle Bachmann, once as promising a candidate as there was in this race, got 6,073 votes, just 5%.

Ron Paul receieved a respectable 26,219 votes, and Newt Gingrich got 16, 251.