Primary, Rick Santorum | featured news

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in what may be a grim development for his campaign, has lost the lead in his home state of Pennsylvania to front-runner Mitt Romney, according to a poll released on Thursday.

Polls are open in Maryland, the District and Wisconsin, where Tuesday’s Republican primaries could move Mitt Romney closer to a nomination that has hovered just out of his reach. Romney is favored to win in all three jurisdictions: the closest race appears to be in Wisconsin, where recent polls have shown him with a single-digit lead over former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.)

The former Pa. senator leads among likely GOP voters back home, but nearly 4 in 10 could change their minds before the April 24 primary.

Republicans went to the polls Saturday in Louisiana to vote in a primary poised to give a boost to Rick Santorum, but also add to Mitt Romney’s growing, if not insurmountable delegate lead in the race for the GOP nomination.

Even if Rick Santorum won the presidential preference vote in Tuesday's Illinois Republican primary -- and polls indicate that it's actually Mitt Romney who is the favorite -- he still could lose out in the delegate race.

Rick Santorum hopes to muscle Newt Gingrich out the race Tuesday and to force a face-off with Mitt Romney. But CNN's Candy Crowley reports Gingrich shows no signs of quitting.

A new poll Monday showed Mitt Romney is surprisingly strong in two Republican presidential primary contests in the South this week that are crucial to his conservative rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

Setting the stage for primary elections Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi, Republicans in Kansas gathered Saturday for their presidential caucuses. Forty delegates are at stake.

Mitt Romney apparently pulled off a narrow victory over Rick Santorum in Ohio on Super Tuesday. But Mr. Santorum scored victories elsewhere, competing with Mr. Romney’s achievement of collecting the most delegates and all but ensuring another round of intense infighting on the road to the Republican presidential nomination. Far from bringing new clarity to the race as some in the party had hoped, Tuesday’s results gave every candidate cause to keep driving forward —including Newt Gingrich, who won a definitive victory in Georgia. They also dashed Mr. Romney’s hope of using the night to assert himself as the inevitable nominee.

NBC News projects that Rick Santorum has won in Tennessee; Mitt Romney seen capturing Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia while Newt Gingrich takes Georgia; Ohio is too close to call and Oklahoma is too early to call.