As the Republican race moves to a state defined by the extremes in recession-era America -- where the underwater and unemployed live just a few miles from the 1 percent -- a sharp class divide is emerging between the two top contenders.

Mitt Romney’s crowds look like something out of the president’s suite at a University of Florida football game -- prosperous, trim, Tattersall-clad, and supportive but not rowdy.

Newt Gingrich supporters, with their spray-painted signs, American flag tees, flip-flops and fanny packs, more closely resemble a group that would fit in nicely playing a few bucks at the dog track.

Exit poll data and unmistakable anecdotal evidence from their events reflects an unfolding campaign in which Romney does best with voters that are a lot like him -- wealthy, well-educated and lukewarm about the populist tea party movement. Gingrich is appealing most to Republicans who earn under six figures, make up the core of the middle-class and are worried about their economic prospects and furious at the establishment.

It’s the Tea Party and the cocktail party...

Republicans prefer to ignore class differences within their auto mechanic and hedge funder coalition, but the establishment vs. insurgency battle between Romney and Gingrich increasingly resembles the beer track-wine track epic battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Gingrich detected the element of the Republican electorate that would have trouble warming to Romney and has begun wooing them with notes out of the hymn book of fellow McLean populist, Pat Buchanan. The former speaker now regularly rails against political correctness and New York and Washington elites while noting that much of the “Massachusetts’ moderate’s” financial support comes from Wall Street. And then, of course, there is Gingrich’s on-again, off-again assault on Romney’s tenure as buyout specialist at Bain...

The populist opening Gingrich sees is apparent in the results from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In the first three states, Romney finished, respectively, in a very narrow second, a decisive first and a distant second. But according to exit polls, he ran away with the country club vote in each.

Among the wealthiest voters, the former Massachusetts governor beat his nearest rival by 12 percent in Iowa, 34 percent in New Hampshire and 15 percent in South Carolina.

With voters who have post-graduate degrees, Romney also won in every state, besting his nearest opponent within the ranks of JDs, MDs and MBAs by two percent in Iowa, 16 percent in New Hampshire and two percent in South Carolina.

The question wasn’t asked in Iowa, but in New Hampshire and South Carolina Romney performed his best among those voters who described their family’s financial situation as “getting ahead” and worst with those said they were “falling behind.”

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