MANCHESTER, N.H. — Mitt Romney rolled to an easy victory Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary, taking a broad stride toward capturing the GOP presidential nomination as the contest heads south for a pair of potentially make-or-break contests.
“Tonight, we celebrate,” Romney told his cheering supporters. “Tomorrow, we go back to work.”
The win, forecast from exit polls almost immediately after voting ended, gave Romney a one-two sweep in the early balloting of the 2012 campaign, a first for any Republican apart from a sitting president.
The conservative candidates who stand the best chance to stop him as the race heads to South Carolina — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — were trailing far back Tuesday and seemed unlikely to get a significant lift from their performance.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas was second Tuesday, with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman third.
Seeking to undercut Romney’s victory, Gingrich and others suggested in advance that anything below 40 percent or so would indicate weakness by Romney, who hovered around 38 percent for most of Tuesday evening.
They didn’t mention that Sen. John McCain’s winning percentage in the 2008 primary was 37 percent.
Santorum, the Iowa runner-up by a handful of votes, and Gingrich were scrambling to create momentum for their campaigns. Perry abandoned New Hampshire, staking his future on South Carolina on Jan. 21.
Romney starts out leading there, too, but that challenge promises to be much more formidable than New Hampshire, which was a fight for second from the start. Unlike Iowa, where leaders came and went atop the polls, no survey ever showed Romney with less than a sizable, double-digit New Hampshire lead.
In South Carolina, however, Romney won’t have what amounted to a home-field advantage — five Massachusetts presidential hopefuls have won the neighboring Granite State in past elections — and he will face a much different electorate in the first Southern primary.
South Carolina has a large bloc of evangelical voters. Romney will face resistance among some Christian conservatives who are suspicious, if not downright hostile, toward his Mormon faith.
In New Hampshire, just 14 percent of those who voted Tuesday said being a “true conservative” was the most important thing to them, trailing far behind the economic concerns cited by 6 in 10 voters, according to interviews by TV networks.
Romney also is facing a more assertive pack of runners-up.
After fighting among themselves for several months, they took after Romney in New Hampshire with sudden ferocity, ganging up on him in a Sunday debate and pounding him over his work at Bain Capital, the private investment firm he co-founded and the source of Romney’s great personal wealth.
While he cites his business background as a virtue, especially in contrast to the extensive Washington resumes of most of his rivals, his opponents have depicted him as a heartless, job-slashing corporate raider.
Still, Romney moves ahead with many advantages, not least a big edge in money and campaign organization, which become increasingly important as the race shifts from Iowa and New Hampshire to a series of big-state contests.
Victories in South Carolina and Florida 10 days later could all but ensure Romney captures the nomination.
Part of his strength comes from the weakness of the opposition.
Each of his rivals holds particular appeal to segments of the Republican base — Paul with libertarians, Santorum and Perry with social conservatives, Gingrich with voters seeking intellectual heft and a long-range vision. None, however, offers a complete package — and that has boosted Romney, who enjoys the steady support of at least a quarter of the electorate.
He could also benefit, as he did in his squeaker win in Iowa, if evangelicals and Tea Party acolytes split their votes among several contenders on the right, allowing Romney to prevail over a crowded field.
As much as anything so far the campaign has demonstrated the power of super PACs, the new political entities that can accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations.
The organizations were a force in Iowa and, to a lesser extent, in New Hampshire, where several appeared to have decided not to waste their money in the face of Romney’s dominance. The pro-Huntsman Our Destiny PAC paid around $2.1 million for airtime starting in mid-November, apparently outspending other outside groups and official campaigns in the state.
Several groups absent from New Hampshire — the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, the Perry-aligned Make Us Great Again and the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future — are already on the air in South Carolina and Florida or planning to be soon.
Restore Our Future plans to spend $2.3 million in South Carolina and $3.6 million for a two-week statewide buy in Florida, according to a source tracking political media ads. Some of those commercials bolster Romney, but the majority go after rivals Gingrich and Perry.
Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide now working for Winning Our Future, said his super PAC will spend $3.4 million in South Carolina, much of it on ads echoing the stinging critiques Gingrich has made about Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
