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Posted: 9:25 PM- DES MOINES - Bested in Iowa by rival Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney headed to New Hampshire late Thursday hoping to look beyond the sharp setback aided by a large evangelical turnout.

"Well, we won the silver," Romney, the former head of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, told a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters who had hoped for a victory party.

But, Romney added, like anyone who doesn't win at their first Olympics, "you come back and win the gold in the final event."

Romney's campaign pointed to initial results showing large crowds at caucuses in strong evangelical areas as part of their loss to Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister. But they camp stayed away from blaming the loss on Romney's Mormon faith, which polls have shown may be a concern with evangelical voters, some of whom who view the LDS Church as heretical.

"I would disagree with any assessment that it was about denomination," campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said when asked whether Romney's Mormon faith affected the race. "What you have is a lot of voters who are evangelicals who identified with someone who is also an evangelical."

But, he quickly added, "I don't know if it made the difference."

Rising from single digits, Romney led the Hawkeye State for most of the year before losing ground to Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor.

Romney outspent Huckabee 20-1 in the state, according to some estimates, yet the advertisements, ground structure and piles of mailers couldn't help him at the caucuses, the first test of the presidential primary election process.

On Fox News, pollster/commentator Frank Luntz said Romney made a "big mistake" by going negative against Huckabee. Focus groups used by Luntz indicated that Iowa Republicans were turned off by the blizzard of attack ads from the Romney campaign and found Huckabee the "most human of all the candidates."

Huckabee never mentioned Romney by name in his victory speech but declared the results show "People really are more important that the purse."

Huckabee appealed to the large evangelical base of the state through television commercials highlighting him as a Christian leader and at one point even asked a reporter whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers. He later apologized.

Some 45 percent of Huckabee's vote came from those who described themselves as "born again," according to news media entrance polls, and Huckabee won 55 percent of those people who said religion mattered a "great deal." Romney only got 19 percent of the born-again votes and only 12 percent of those who said they cared a great deal about religion.

"It is not clear that all of the Huckabee votes were anti-Mormon, but it is plausible that Romney's faith posed a problem for him," says John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life.

Sen. Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican and fellow Mormon, said Iowa is fertile territory for evangelical voters on the Republican side and Huckabee benefited from it.

"There's obviously some anti-Mormonism in this," Bennett said. "You see the kind of mailings that are being made, [and] some of the television people that are attacking the church, but I'd like to believe it is more a pro-Baptist [choice] than it is anti-Mormon."

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has worked to overcome the hurdle polls showed with voters wary of casting a ballot for a candidate who belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In early December, he addressed the issue in a much-hyped speech, saying that while his faith - and its shared values with other religions - informs who he is as a person, the LDS Church would not dictate his actions if elected president.

Many observers say it's too early to tell how much concerns about his faith affected the race in Iowa.

"It's never clear when [voters] say they won't vote for him, whether it's the Mormonism, or whether they can't identify with him as a middle class person, or they're concerned about his positions on things," says Michael Cromartie, director of the evangelicals in civic life program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "It's all too early. We can't base everything on Iowa."

Richard Bushman, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, says a big Romney loss could be a bad sign.

"That could mean the intensive campaign, the big speech, the constant refrain of being a sensible Christian is simple just not winning over evangelicals," Bushman says. But he adds, there are "other things in play. Even so, it would be a sign that the whole operation has not yielded fruit."

Iowans seemed aware of Romney's religion when asked at caucus sites Thursday night.

"I have thought about it," Romney supporter and Catholic Luke Feld said at the Waukee Middle School. "But it doesn't bother me. I don't hold it against him at all."

Whether Romney's faith hurt him in Iowa or not, the LDS Church helped boost Romney to this stage.

Romney's name was one of three submitted by a church leader during a search for a new leader to rescue the scandal-ridden Games in 1999.

Then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, also a Mormon, asked a number of community leaders, including LDS Church apostle and Olympic liaison Robert D. Hales, "for a short list of names - people who could possibly do what was needed to re-establish confidence and handle the extraordinary challenge of staging an Olympic Games," the church said in a written response in 2001.

Romney was one of three people Hales recommended.

Romney is credited with turning around the debt-loaded Games into a successful world event, an act he then parlayed into the Massachusetts governorship, and eventually, his presidential bid.