Romney wins CPAC straw poll, barely edges Santorum nationally

Mitt Romney won the CPAC presidential straw poll with 38 percent of the vote, finishing with a single-digit lead over runner-up Rick Santorum, who pulled 31 percent support. Newt Gingrich was a distant third, with 15 percent, followed by Ron Paul, with 12 percent.

The poll is a welcome symbolic win for Romney, who was the second-place finisher in the 2011 straw poll, after Paul, who did not participate in CPAC this year. Romney won the straw poll in 2007.

For the first time, CPAC pollster Tony Fabrizio also conducted a national survey of self-identified conservatives. Romney also finished on top in that survey, by a tiny margin: he took 27 percent to Santorum's 25 percent, Gingrich's 20 percent and Paul's 8 percent.

In some ways, the outcome is most helpful for Romney because of the story that won't get written: if Santorum had won the straw poll, it would have generated a thousand Sunday wrap-up pieces reiterating that Romney has problems with the GOP base. And it gives the former Massachusetts governor a data point he can highlight as he battles questions about his appeal on the right, going forward.

On the other hand, the results tend to confirm that we've got a Romney-Santorum race on our hands, so on that count it doesn't shake up the prevailing sense of where things stand.

Also for the first time this year, the straw poll allowed participants to vote online, with voting lasting from Thursday at 9 a.m. to Saturday at 1 p.m. There were 3,408 participants, down from the 3,742 who voted in 2011 but still the second-highest turnout ever.