welcome back to early start. we are at the cnn election center. have you been up with us all night? because it has been quite a nail-biter. eight votes actually separated these two men, mitt romney is declared the winner, 30,015 votes. rick santorum, 30,007. of course, they re both at 25%. santorum is being called the real winner here. our christine romans is working really hard for us this morning. you re the iowan. and if anybody knows iowa, it s you, my friend. there s a real breakdown on how people voted and we know this because we had entrance polls where we can ask people questions as they re walking in. why were they voting certain ways? look, we talked to people about what you re thinking and why you re casting this vote on the way in right before they did it. we asked them all of these questions. what kind of experience they were looking for? when did you decide to support?
health care was most important. on the economy, 42%. here s the budget deficit. here s abortion. you see who wins those categories? boom, boom, boom. interesting, right? i want to look at the economy and the budget deficit in particular. and sort of break those down a little bit. a little bit closer. and you can see as we walk over on the other side here, interesting, right? it s romney, paul, santorum, paul, romney, santorum. the same three get the highest marks for handling the money issues of this country, our burgeoning budget deficit, our national debt and fixing the economy. but it s romney who does much better on those, overall on the economy. i told you just a few minutes ago that it was romney who got the vote, 48% for being his experience in business being a big boon to people who are those gop iowa voters. so just some interesting nuances that we re finding in these entrance polls and trying to figure out what these undecided until the last minute iowa
more of what he said about i asked him about citizens united, whether he regretted supporting that. he didn t, but here s who he targeted. the victim of one particular person, mitt romney, whose staff went out and decided to run a deliberately negative and dishonest campaign. this particular approach has nothing to do with the citizens united case, it has to do way bunch of millionaires getting together to run a negative campaign. as james put it, newt will get a lot of attention this week for what he s doing to mitt romney. that s exactly what citizens united was about, about people what happens if a bunch of millionaires get together and decide to run a negative campaign. he looks like he s come out of apocalypse now or something. i can just see him with a knife in his teeth, you know, crawling out of the swamp ready to do battle. are you a writer or something? you re writing a visual here that s fascinating. you know, ron mott, what was interesting in those entrance poll
and after a disappointing showing in last night s caucuses, the texas governor rick perry said he s got some thinking to do. listen. but with the voters decision tonight in iowa, i decided to return to texas, assess the results of tonight s caucus. determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race. in the end, iowa is all about romney and santorum and that, to some degree, ron paul and what about me? ron paul finished third with 21% of the vote. he led entrance polls, both as the true conservative candidate and also the choice of more moderate voters. paul promised to keep on fighting. the best way to promote a cause. win elections. that s the way you promote it.
nail-biter race, but when you look at at the polls, you see the electability issue of mitt romney, and the number of people who are just sort of waiting to the very end to decide what to do. and it shows you how iowans were really searching for their gop candidate until the very end, and they were still searching for the candidate. you must have been on the phone with your relatives? absolutely. and i will say except for ron paul, because they have had their yard signs up long before anybody else, and many of those entrance polls show it, too, because many people long before december had been decided on ron paul. christine, good to see you. sure. rick santorum clearly connected in iowa, but his surge has a closer look at the controversial statements he has made about african-americans on welfare and locking up doctors who perform abortions. [ panting ] ha ha ha!