Iowa GOP poll shows Romney leading but threatened by Santorum surge

The turbulent GOP presidential campaign produced yet another twist Saturday when a new poll of Iowa caucus-goers showed a last-minute surge by Rick Santorum, the former senator who had been near the back of the pack for almost all of 2011.

The Des Moines Register poll conducted by Selzer & Co, eagerly awaited by campaign teams because of its sophisticated polling techniques and accuracy in previous caucuses, suggested a tight finish on Tuesday night.

The poll showed Mitt Romney on top with 24%, Ron Paul on 22%, Rick Santorum on 15%, Newt Gingrich on 12%, Rick Perry on 11% and Michele Bachmann on 7%.

But a breakdown of the poll revealed that over the last two days of the survey Santorum enjoyed a significant late surge in support. The portion of the poll covering just the last two days left Romney at the top with 24% but had Santorum leap-frogging Paul to take second place on 21%, leaving Paul in third on 18%.

Speaking at a campaign event in Ottumwa, before the poll figures came out, Santorum said he would do well in the caucuses because Iowan voters were ignoring the pundits who had written off his campaign. He predicted a close finish.

His surge owes much to his endorsement last week by two leaders of the Christian Evangelical movement, Bob Vander Plaats, chief executive of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Centre.

Christian evangelicals make up an estimated 50% of the more than 100,000 voters expected to turn out for the caucuses, the first contest in the 2012 Republican presidential nomination process.

The Christian evangelicals helped secure victory for Mike Huckabee in Iowa in 2008 but they are more divided now. Santorum could try to appeal to Christian evangelicals supporting Perry and Bachmann to shift to him in order to beat Romney.

His rising poll figures will make him a target for the other campaigns who have, apart from Perry, largely left him alone. Perry has mounted an aggressive advertising campaign over the last week pointing to $1 billion in earmarks that Santorum, who portrays himself as fiscally conservative, approved while a senator in Pennsylvania, including the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska.

If Santorum was to win, he would struggle to expand his campaign beyond Iowa. He has devoted himself to winning Iowa, addressing more than 360 townhall meetings in the last year, but has scant organisation outside the state and is one of the worst-funded of the candidates.

A Santorum win would help the Democratic party, which could portray the former Pennsylvania senator – strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion, believing life begins at conception, and in favour of bombing Iran – as the face of the current Republican party.

A Santorum win would also upset Romney's hopes of a first-place finish that could help him wrap up the nomination by the end of January.

Santorum's surge comes after a topsy-turvy campaign that has seen almost all the candidates other than Jon Huntsman in the front-runner slot in Iowa: Bachmann, Perry, Paul, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, as well as Romney.