With double-digit leads in statewide polls, Mitt Romney earned a game-changing victory in the Florida primary, making him the first GOP candidate to win more than one of the state-by-state nomination contests.

With 72 percent of precincts reporting, exit polls showed Romney at 47 percent, Newt Gingrich at 32 percent, Rick Santorum at 13 percent and Ron Paul at 7 percent.

With his latest win, Romney takes all 50 delegates at stake.

Voters were mostly concerned about beating President Obama in the upcoming election and the economy in a state where the unemployment level is now at 9.9 percent, compared with the national average of 8.5 percent. An estimated 147,500 jobs have been lost in the state since November 2008.

Senior citizens favored Romney by 51 percent, compared with Gingrich at 34 percent. Hispanic voters favored Romney by 53 percent and Gingrich at 30 percent.

Almost two-thirds of the voters said they support the tea-party movement.

Romney’s win ends Gingrich’s recent streak of luck on the campaign trail – just 10 days after he scored a little expected victory over the former Massachusetts governor in the South Carolina primary.

After that win, Gingrich surged ahead in the Florida polls. But Romney fired back with a blitz of $7 million in Florida TV ads attacking his chief rival.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Romney said Gingrich “really can’t whine about negative campaigning when he launched a very negative campaign in South Carolina.”

“If you attack me, I’m not going to just sit back,” he warned.

At his Tampa, Fla., campaign headquarters, Romney declared, “Doing well in Florida is a pretty good indication of your prospects nationally.”

The Wall Street Journal reported, “His advisers believe that Florida may have presented the last real threat to his claim on the nomination.”

After the polls closed, Romney thanked voters for the victory, saying he stands “ready to lead this party and this nation.”

“Primary contests are not easy, and they’re not supposed to be,” he said. “A competitive primary does not divide us. It prepares us, and we will win.

“And when we gather back here in Tampa seven months from now, ours will be a united party with a wining ticket for America.”

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