Mitt Romney wins Florida primary, routing Newt Gingrich

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Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets people during a visit to his headquarters on January 31, 2012 in Tampa, Florida.

With his convincing Florida win on Tuesday, Mitt Romney has re-established himself as the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. But he has not yet managed to restore his luster as the GOP's "inevitable" choice.

NPR is projecting that Romney has won the Florida primary, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in second place. With 44 percent of precincts reporting, Romney had nearly 48 percent of the vote. Gingrich had 31 percent. NPR's projection is based on exit polling and on actual vote counts from counties that ended voting before 8 p.m. ET, when the final polls closed.

By taking the largest state to vote so far by a significant margin, Romney has recovered from Gingrich's decisive win Jan. 21 in South Carolina. But Gingrich vows to press on – as do Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

The race will continue for an additional "six to eight months," Gingrich told ABC News on Tuesday — "unless Romney drops out earlier."

Such bold claims aside, the calendar appears to favor Romney, at least in the short term. Several states will hold caucuses and primaries in February. In many cases, they appear to offer favorable terrain for the former Massachusetts governor.

"Obviously, he's going to have tremendous momentum from this," says John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a social conservative group, who has endorsed Santorum. Romney will "win Nevada and Michigan from this."

How Romney Won Florida

After suffering a serious setback in South Carolina, Romney kept strongly on offense against Gingrich for more than a week, pummeling him with personal attacks and an ad campaign that has been estimated at five times the size of what Gingrich could muster.

After seeking to remain above the fray through much of the primary season, aiming most of his criticism toward President Obama rather than his Republican rivals, Romney went directly after Gingrich through ads, robocalls and his own public statements.

Gingrich complained that Romney had been "relentlessly negative" and "blatantly dishonest." But he was never able to regain momentum following his poorly-received performances in a pair of Florida debates last week.

Ethics And Early Voting

It wasn't just the attacks on Gingrich that were effective, but their sequencing, says Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. Romney was able to raise questions about Gingrich's status as a Washington "influence peddler," then unleash a devastating ad showing vintage footage of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw recounting the House vote in 1997 to reprimand him on ethics charges.

"There is one glaring Achilles' heel in Gingrich that has strongly been pointed out," says Pete Dunbar, a longtime Republican strategist and campaign consultant in Florida who is not working for any of the presidential candidates.

"When you look back at the personal behavior and the ethics sanction that was imposed on him by his own body, that has had a major impact," Dunbar says.

Romney's organizational strength also helped him push potential supporters who took advantage of the state's early and absentee voting procedures.

Stemberger, who requested an absentee ballot, says he subsequently received a half-dozen pieces of mail from the Romney campaign, "very nicely done," that all attempted to speak to his interests as a Christian conservative.

"Romney had the organization in place to be able to track absentee requests and then have someone follow up," says MacManus. "You can't do that at the last moment. You have to have the money and the expertise, and Gingrich didn't have either of those."

What Florida May Portend

Florida marks a break in several important respects from earlier contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Florida is also the first state to allow only registered Republican voters to participate in its nominating contest. It's also the first "winner-take-all" state, allocating all of its delegates to the national GOP convention to the primary winner (although that decision may well be challenged further on down the road).

Romney hopes the big boost he'll receive from what looks to be a convincing victory will ease his path as the contest spreads to other states.

Attention quickly will shift to caucuses on Saturday in Nevada and Maine. Romney easily won Nevada's first-in-the-West caucuses in 2008 and his momentum out of Florida should give him a boost there.

Nevada polls had been showing some momentum for Gingrich, says Chuck Muth, a prominent conservative activist in the state who has been advising a superPAC that supports Gingrich.

But a blowout for Romney in Florida would take a lot of the wind out of Gingrich's sails, Muth says.

"Gingrich needs to keep it close in order to have a shot in Nevada at all," he says.

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