Santorum claims strong fundraising after Tuesday wins

Fresh off of his Tuesday night wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said Wednesday he has the momentum and fundraising to propel him towards success on Super Tuesday.

"We're doing very, very well raising money," Santorum said on CNN's "Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien." "I think last night we raised a quarter of a million dollars online. So we're doing really well and we feel like going forward we're going to have the money we need to make the case we want to make."

He said his campaign, whose cash intake has lagged behind that of his rivals, just experienced the "best two weeks that we've had of the campaign, fundraising-wise."

Those resources will help Santorum compete as the campaign rolls next to Michigan, where delegates are allocated proportionally, and Arizona, which is winner-take-all. After those primaries and Washington state's caucuses on March 3, over 400 delegates are up for grabs on Super Tuesday. CNN delegate estimates showed Santorum moving to third place in the delegate count as of Wednesday morning.

"We're heading to Michigan; we're really excited about that. We're also heading to Ohio. Super Tuesday is going to be a very, very big day for us," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We think Michigan is a great place for us to plant our flag and talk about jobs and manufacturing and giving opportunities for everybody in America to rise."

Michigan has a significant population of evangelical voters, and the proportional allocation could help second, third, or fourth-place finishing candidates stack up the 1144 delegates to win the nomination. Mitt Romney was born in Michigan and his father was the state's governor.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, outraised Santorum by a 25-to-1 margin in the fourth quarter of 2011, though Santorum's fundraising picked up in January. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich brought in more than double Santorum's haul that quarter.

Although no delegates were tied to Missouri's primary, and the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses will not directly correlate to delegate allocation, Santorum said the three wins -- combined with his first victory in Iowa -- gives him momentum as the race moves towards Super Tuesday in early March.

"Iowa was a non-binding caucus too and that turned out to be a pretty important race and everybody participates in that every year, every presidential election year," Santorum said on CNN. "We definitely are the campaign right now with the momentum, the enthusiasm on the ground.

Santorum said he hopes to pick up additional delegates through the apportioning process, which takes place at various conventions in the spring.

He pointed to his wins as evidence that his message is resonating, despite having a smaller financial pool.

"If money made the difference, we wouldn't have won four primaries so far," he said.