Mitt Romney has won the New Hampshire primary, Fox News projects, notching back-to-back victories in the first two contests of the presidential nominating season. Click below to read the rest of the story.
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Fox News also projects that Ron Paul will finish second and Jon Huntsman will finish third. Rick Perry is projected to finish in sixth place.
Unclear is what Romney’s margin of victory will be, though Fox News projects he will win by double digits. With just 13 percent of precincts reporting, Romney is leading with 36 percent of the vote. Paul has 24 percent and Huntsman has 18 percent.
Expectations had been raised to unnerving levels for the former Massachusetts governor. The candidate won the leadoff Iowa caucuses by just eight votes — a back-to-back win in New Hampshire is a historic achievement, but his competitors nevertheless have said he must win by a considerable margin in order for the victory to count for anything going into South Carolina.
Newt Gingrich has suggested Romney would need to win with 50 percent of the vote, though the polls suggest that is impossible and other analysts have put his ideal percentage at about 37 percent or more.
Based on early returns Tuesday, Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who came in second in Iowa, are each pulling in 10 percent.
Perry is at 1 percent. Perry placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses and has struggled to recapture the momentum his campaign boasted after his entrance into the race over the summer.
Exit polls in New Hampshire showed independents sharply divided over their choice for the Republican presidential nominee, with Romney narrowly leading among that vital voting bloc.
The polling showed undeclared voters made up a significant 44 percent of voters in the Granite State on Tuesday — that’s nearly twice the number of independents that showed up in Iowa last week. In that group, 30 percent said they were supporting Romney, while 29 percent were supporting Ron Paul and 27 percent were supporting Jon Huntsman.
