Mitt Romney easily clinches Florida primary with more votes than Gingrich and Santorum combined

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Republicans face key primary vote

10 January 2012 Last updated at 16:09 ET

Voters in New Hampshire give their views on the race for the White House

The race to take on President Barack Obama in November's election has hit New Hampshire, the first primary in the Republican nomination process.

Voting is under way in the Granite State, where polls show Mitt Romney's big lead shrinking slightly.

Jon Huntsman, who has all but staked his entire candidacy on Tuesday's vote, is competing for second place with Ron Paul, according to pollsters.

Mr Romney won last week's Iowa contest narrowly over ex-Senator Rick Santorum.

Mr Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are courting the conservative vote, with one eye on a primary later this month in staunchly Republican South Carolina.

Primaries and caucuses - different methods of choosing a party's candidate for office - will take place in every US state over the next few months before the eventual Republican winner is crowned at the party convention in August.

'Staying power'

A primary is a state-level vote held to nominate a party's candidate for office, while caucuses choose a candidate via meetings of party members and activists held across a state.

In New Hampshire, analysts estimate about 250,000 Republican voters will turn out, while some 75,000 Democratic voters are expected to cast a ballot backing President Obama for re-election.

Most polls in New Hampshire opened at 07:00 (12:00 GMT) and close at 20:00 local time.

But the tiny community of Dixville Notch enjoyed its four-yearly moment in the political spotlight by casting ballots at midnight, with all of nine registered voters.

Among the Republicans, Mr Romney and former Utah Governor Huntsman were tied on two votes each, with Barack Obama winning three Democratic votes.

Two opinion polls released on Monday in the small north-eastern state showed Mr Romney's lead clipped slightly, putting him between 13 and 17 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, Texas Congressman Paul.

Correspondents say many voters remain lukewarm in their support of Mr Romney, but see him as the most viable candidate to challenge President Obama.

"He wouldn't have been my first choice, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices," one voter, David Searles, 56, told Reuters news agency.

Mr Huntsman's New Hampshire campaign appears to have picked up some momentum, and he has closed the gap on Mr Paul in the state.

Speaking on cable network NBC on Tuesday, he said: "Tonight I think we're going to prove the point that we've got the staying power and we've got the ability to bring this thing home."

Romney v expectation?

Appearing on cable news network MSNBC, former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum described himself as "the candidate who is taking on the big issues" as he pitched himself to blue-collar workers and pledged to defend the manufacturing sector.

Mr Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are vying for conservative votes, with one eye on a primary later this month in staunchly Republican South Carolina.

Mr Romney unwittingly gave ammunition to his rivals on Monday in an off-the-cuff remark while telling business leaders how he wanted consumers to pick and choose private health insurers.

"If you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," said Mr Romney, who is under attack over his leadership of a private equity firm, Bain Capital.

Mr Huntsman, who is the former US ambassador to China, pounced.

"Governor Romney enjoys firing people; I enjoy creating jobs," he said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry - who has skipped campaigning in New Hampshire to try to revive his flagging candidacy in South Carolina - attacked Mr Romney over a remark at the weekend that he knew was it was like to fear a "pink slip", or being fired.

Nine Dixville Notch registered voters made their choice in the New Hampshire primary

"I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out," Mr Perry said on Monday.

Mr Gingrich's supporters, meanwhile, unveiled a short film, When Mitt Came To Town, portraying Mr Romney as a greedy "corporate raider" who destroyed the lives of American families.

The pro-Gingrich group, Winning Our Future, is poised to spend $3.4m (£2.2m) on TV advertising in South Carolina after the New Hampshire vote.

The candidate himself attempted to frame Mr Romney's expected win as a loss. Mr Gingrich told Fox News he believes "the biggest story" on Tuesday is that Mr Romney will fall short of "any reasonable expectation" in New Hampshire.

Mr Romney has repelled the attacks, claiming he helped to create more than 100,000 jobs during his time at Bain Capital.

He casts himself as a job creator who can turn around the US economy at a time when the unemployment rate is 8.5%.

President Obama is seeking re-election amid voter concern at the pace of economic recovery from the recession that started in 2007 during the White House tenure of George W Bush and ended in 2009.

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Republican Gingrich out of Virginia primary election

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has failed to meet the requirements to be in the presidential primary election in Virginia, where he resides, the state's Republican Party said.

Gingrich had been leading in a poll of Virginia voters and a spokesman for the former speaker of the House of Representatives defiantly pledged to run a write-in campaign for the March 6 vote. However, Virginia does not permit write-ins in primary elections, according to the state code.

The Virginia Republican Party also said Texas Governor Rick Perry's petitions also had failed to qualify him for the ballot. Only former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Texas Congressman Ron Paul qualified.

Three other members of the Republican field trying to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama - former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum - did not meet the Thursday deadline for submitting petitions.

Despite Gingrich's last-minute scramble to submit his petitions by the deadline, the state party said on its website on Saturday that a review process showed he did not have the required 10,000 verifiable signatures.

The Virginia state board of elections earlier had said Gingrich, among the top three Republican candidates nationally, had made the ballot with 11,050 signatures.

"Only a failed system excludes four out of the six major candidates seeking access to the ballot," Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said. "Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates.

"We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice," Krull said.

But Virginia Code Section 24.2-644(C) rules out write-ins in its first sentence, saying: "At all elections except primary elections it shall be lawful for any voter to vote for any person other than the listed candidates for the office by writing or hand printing the person's name on the official ballot."

A December 22 Quinnipiac poll for Virginia had Gingrich ahead with 30 percent of the vote, compared with 25 percent for Romney and 9 percent for Paul. Virginia is one of 11 states holding a primary or caucus on March 6.

After Gingrich staged two campaign events in the state last week, his campaign had been confident that he had made the ballot even as his last-minute scramble raised concerns about Gingrich's abilities to run a national campaign.

(Reporting By Sam Youngman; Editing by Bill Trott)

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