we re getting some new numbers. let me go to the vote board. 49% of the precincts have now reported, almost half. and look at this. rick santorum establishing a lead of 350 votes ahead of morm morm, 13,501 to 13,151. they re both at 24%. ron paul, not very far behind, 12,146, at 22%. newt gingrich, a different fourth with 13%, 7,368. rick perry, only 10%, 5,600 votes. michele bachmann, 6%, very disappointing night for michele bachmann. she was born in iowa, raised in iowa, represents a district in minnesota that s right next door. unfortunately for her, she s not doing very well in these caucuses. jon huntsman didn t really campaign. he s going full speed ahead in new hampshire. we ll see how he does a week from today in new hampshire. anderson, it s still way, way too close to call oh, there you are, over there.
resources. this might go back to the, you know, that old strategy for winning in iowa, that grassroots is what really matters here in order to win this state. that tv advertising, big budgets, big buses with your name plastered across it, that doesn t always mean everything in this state, wolf. he worked the hardest. there s no doubt about that in iowa. he was the first to visit all 99 counties and spent an enormous amount of time with limited resources there. let s go to anderson cooper and ali velshi. they re monitoring social media. what do you see? we re talking about where the biggest buzz is online. at the risk of sounding like a big nerd, i ve been following this very close my. wouldn t be the first time, ali. i hear you. we re bogging down, actually. we re getting 14,000 to 15,000 tweets per hour that are naming one of the candidates. the colors here correspond to various candidates. all night and most of the day, with the exception of a few minutes, ron paul has been
i keep moving around here. very dynamic night here. the map is starting to populate in terms of the population centers. what are we seeing now? what we re seeing is, a, more of the counties filling in. this part of the state is very important. again, the split. four years ago, this was mike huckabee country. one county for romney, country county for romney here. this is your tea party evangelical vote. mike huckabee took it all four years ago. we ve got a split. the lighter pink is ron paul, the dark red is mitt romney, the purple is rick santorum. we have a three-way race here. earlier i told you michele bachmann was winning one county. that was this county up here, howard county. rick santorum now has the lead there with 80% of the vote counted. michele bachmann is on track right now to not even win one iowa county. newt gingrich is carrying this county up here right now, 50% of the vote in. but as you can see, pretty close. we ll watch the vote come in. anderson, right now, almo
iowa. but if he does fourth place, he can make the argument that ron paul is not sustainable, that santorum is not sustainable, but he s in the lead in south carolina and, therefore, can win the mini caucus. actually, when you talk to the romney people, they will tell you it s rick perry and newt gingrich who can raise the most money, so they would rather those guys finish way back because those are the people that they believe have some sustainability in terms of raising the money. that s right. that s exactly right. the romney people have said very clearly they think there are only two people in this race who could potentially beat them, one is gingrich, one is perry. they would like to have both disposed of tonight. if gingrich is way back in fourth or even fifth, that makes it harder for him. he s shown an, anderson, he s one of the candidates who can live off the land. live off the debate. if debates were the first primaries, you could argue that
margins stay roughly the same in this part of the state, it is the conservative western part of the state that could well settle this race, anderson. we re watching the math come in. it is just a fascinating time. and as you look at the colors, we had a two-way race four years ago, a three-way race now. we re going to be at this a while. just a couple hundred votes right now separating the top three. let s check in with alex castellanos, and also erick erickson. they re at santorum headquarters. it looks a lot more crowded. looks like a lot more excitement there or energy there since last time we ve talked. they ve got to be excited about what they re seeing in the polls, and clearly waiting for some of those votes still to come in from the northwestern part of the state, from sioux city and elsewhere. yeah, finally voters are starting to outnumber media here. so you can see a little bit of excitement. but there s a lot of good news here for rorp rorm, for example, it appears he s