To The Center

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney easily won Tuesday’s Florida primary, earning 46 percent of the vote and winning all 50 of the state’s delegates.

According to CNN, the Florida Department of State announced that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich earned a disappointing 32 percent, while former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum received just 13 percent. Texas Congressman Ron Paul finished fourth with 7 percent. The win, Romney’s first since New Hampshire, giver the former governor new momentum heading into the Super Tuesday primaries, which are more than a month away on March 6.

In his victory speech to supporters, Romney sounded poised to take control of the GOP, saying that, “I stand ready to lead this party and to lead our nation,” reports The New York Times. “My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity,” he later added.

Despite losing by 14 points, Gingrich seemed undeterred. The Chicago Tribune reports that Gingrich stood behind a podium that had a banner that read “46 states to go.” “We are going to contest every place and we are going to win and we will be in Tampa as the nominee in August,” he promised his supporters.

Gingrich easily won South Carolina, but he simply could not match Romney’s spending power, which allowed Romney to run a barrage of negative ads that Gingrich was never able to recover from. The win also proves that Romney may be earning wide Republican support, since it is perceived that he easily won New Hampshire because he was governor of the next state over and his victory in Iowa was later overturned.

Santorum, who was in Las Vegas when the results were announced, told his supporters that he is the real conservative alternative to Romney. He said that Gingrich’s plan to prove that he was the “anti-Mitt” did not work because he became “…the issue. We can’t allow our nominee to be the issue in the campaign.”

The next primaries include caucuses in Maine, Nevada, Colorado and Minnesotta.