. >> are they rooting for san t santorum? r night in chicago, axelrod and those guys, are they basically saying, come on, rick? >> they've seen, though, the vulnerabilities that mitt romney is displaying. >> who has more? >> rick santorum is a more target-rich environment. >> his rap sheet -- >> for a general election, absolutely. >> problem with women and gays. his rap sheet is -- >> the obama path, they think, is to go in states like nevada, colorado, so-called enclaves of upscale suburbanites who don't have cultural baggage, who are not hard core partisans, moved away from the gop in the last six years. santorum is a nominee, that's a good contrast for president obama. >> that's a bonus. >> yeah. >> does rick pick up -- just to make his case, does he pick up the reagan democrats? >> that's the other side of the argument, chris. exactly right. would santorum be a tougher candidate than romney. >> older people once voted democrat are now picking up republican. >> tougher in ohio, pennsylvania, michigan, because he has that cu

very few are left standing so it will now be time for romney and san t santorum to engage. the one thing we've learned in debates, santorum can go toe to toe because santorum knows romney's record nearly as well as romney does and he can't take a punch. >> and we are talk iing about conservative issues from gay marriage to whether or not the hhs decision overstepped on the part of the obama administration. i want to talk a little bit more about exactly what the conservative vote means because you mentioned going forward here, major, and i want to know what we're talk iing about in terms of numbers. so we asked richard lui to look into that. what did you find out about the conservative vote? >> chris, good morning to you. as you've been noting so far, there's a very important voting group and can mitt romney win without the conservative vote? we look at some of our exit polling. the voters call themselves very conservative in our polling are important. when mitt romney won that group of votes, that is when he won the states. so iowa and south carolina, for instance, when we t