The struggle between Republican presidential front-runner Mitt
Romney and closest rival Rick Santorum continues Tuesday with a primary
election in Illinois.
The RealClearPolitics.com average of the latest major polls shows Romney
leading among Illinois Republicans with 39.5 percent, followed by Santorum
with 31 per cent.
Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich was at 13 percent, and Texas
Congressman Ron Paul was at 8 percent.
The Illinois contest follows an easy victory for Romney on Sunday in
Puerto Rico, the U.S. commonwealth in the Caribbean. The former Massachusetts
governor won the Spanish-speaking island's Republican primary with a whopping
83 percent of the vote.
Illinois has 69 delegates to the Republican nominating convention in
September.
The Republican nominee will face President Obama, who is unopposed
for renomination in his left-leaning Democratic Party, in the November general
elections.
Obama, a former U.S. senator from Illinois, is a resident of Chicago, the
state's largest city.
With 12.9 million people -- about the population of Senegal or one-third
the population of Poland -- Illinois is the fifth most populous of the 50
states. With about 150,000 square kilometers, Illinois is similar in area to
Nepal or Tunisia.
Nestled between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, with Chicago touching
the Great Lakes, Illinois has rich farmland, with maize, soya and hogs as its
top agricultural products. Chicago and its vast suburbs are a hub for
transportation and industry, as well as service sectors including
communications and banking.
Romney goes into Tuesday's primary with 521 delegates of the 1,144 needed
to secure the nomination, according to a tally by the Washington Post.
Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, has 253 delegates,
followed by Gingrich with 136 and Paul with 50.
