US Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney swept to a big win in his party's primary in Puerto Rico yesterday, bolstering his position as front-runner in the race to decide who will face Democratic president Barack Obama in the November election.
With about 60 per cent of the ballots counted, Mr Romney had about 83 per cent of the vote, according to Puerto Rico's electoral commission. Rick Santorum was in second place with just under 8 per cent.
With Puerto Rico's Republican Electoral Commissioner Jose Enrique Melendez declaring Mr Romney's victory official last night, he was poised to sweep all 20 delegates.
At a town hall meeting in Vernon Hills, Illinois, the former Massachusetts governor said his "extraordinary victory" signaled that Republicans can tap into broad-based support in the Hispanic community.
"Those people who don't think Latinos will vote for a Republican need to take a look at Puerto Rico," he said. "I intend to become our nominee, and I intend to get Latino voters to vote for a Republican and take back the White House."
Mr Romney has a big lead in support from party delegates, whose backing is needed to win the nomination. But he faces a growing challenge from Mr Santorum in Illinois, which holds its primary contest on Tuesday.
The Illinois vote is the next big hurdle in the months-long fight to win the 1,144 delegates needed to seal the Republican nomination.
Mr Santorum, a former US senator from Pennsylvania, had posed an early potential threat to Mr Romney in Puerto Rico, since his Catholicism and social conservatism were seen resonating among some voters in the predominantly Catholic territory.
But Mr Romney's campaign was endorsed by just about every prominent Republican on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean island, and Mr Santorum angered many Puerto Ricans with comments last week that they needed to make English their primary language if they wanted to pursue statehood over their current status as a self-governing US commonwealth.
"You can't impose English on people. My sense is that he (Santorum) was very poorly advised or he would not have said what he said," said Ana Lydia Porrata-Doria (69), who voted for Mr Romney.
Puerto Ricans, who recognise both English and Spanish as their official languages, will vote in November in a statehood referendum.
With Puerto Rico's unemployment rate running at 15.1 per cent, many voters said they supported Mr Romney because they believed he was best positioned among the Republican candidates to deliver on pledges about job creation on the island.
Puerto Rico, about 2,000km from the US mainland, has about 3.8 million people. Its population can vote in partisan primaries but not in presidential elections. Puerto Ricans within the United States have the same voting rights as other US citizens.
Congress would have to give approval for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state. Although Congress has considered various proposals to make English the official US language, none has ever passed.
Mr Romney's win owas part of a carefully planned "island strategy," which has included wins in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and US Virgin Islands, to blunt the impact of losses to Mr Santorum in some recent contests.