Very late on Friday night, the Republican Party of Iowa e-mailed this statement to reporters:
In order to clarify conflicting reports and to affirm the results released January 18 by the Republican Party of Iowa, Chairman Matthew Strawn and the State Central Committee declared Senator Rick Santorum the winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucus.
Previously, the party had only used much tamer language to describe Santorum’s certified plurality of 34 votes over national frontrunner Mitt Romney, citing the matter of eight precincts that had lost their official documentation — though in fact, numbers had been reported by those precincts on caucus night.
As a result, one party official was calling the caucus result a “split decision,” and the state party chairman called Santorum “the winner of the certified precinct vote total by 34 votes.”
This compared oddly to the state party chairman having said on caucus night that Romney won by an eight-vote margin, before the party had gone through its process of certifying the results and checking for errors in their spreadsheets.
It should be noted that including the caucus-night totals from those eight precincts, Santorum’s lead expands to 69 votes.
One does have to wonder what might have been for Santorum if his victory had been reported accurately on caucus night, or alternatively if Romney’s eight-vote lead had been correctly described as tentative and the race as too close to call. Had either of those scenarios occurred, Santorum could potentially have gained more momentum from the state, and have performed better in New Hampshire and in the polls for South Carolina.
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