Saturday, February 11, 2012

Forget About Tied With Romney, New Poll Shows Santorum Now Leading GOP Field ... BY 15 POINTS

Wow!
Allahpundit hinted at this last night, and this morning Public Policy Polling released its data. Rick Santorum has ridden the wave of his Tuesday sweep to a strong national lead among Republican voters. PPP calls Santorum the emerging “consensus candidate”:
Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP’s newest national poll. He’s at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul.

Part of the reason for Santorum’s surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney’s favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31). Gingrich has fallen even further. A 44% plurality of GOP voters now hold a negative opinion of him to only 42% with a positive one. That’s a 34 point drop from 2 months ago when he was at +32 (60/28).

Santorum is now completely dominating with several key segments of the electorate, especially the most right leaning parts of the party. With those describing themselves as ‘very conservative,’ he’s now winning a majority of voters at 53% to 20% for Gingrich and 15% for Romney. Santorum gets a majority with Tea Party voters as well at 51% to 24% for Gingrich and 12% for Romney. And with Evangelicals he falls just short of a majority with 45% to 21% for Gingrich and 18% for Romney.

It used to be that Gingrich was leading with all these groups and Romney was staying competitive enough with them to hold the overall lead. No more- a consensus conservative candidate finally seems to be emerging and it’s Santorum.
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2 Comments:

At 2/11/2012 8:17 PM, Blogger Joe @ Defend Us In Battle said...

A telling sign for me is that a Romney staffer was quoted as saying that Az and Mi are MUST WINS, shortly after he won ME today.

You don't mention two states that should be "Easy wins" as must wins, on the day you won another state. They know the tide is turning and need to try and show that they still have momentum.

 
At 2/12/2012 4:40 PM, Blogger Paul Zummo said...

Maine itself tells an interesting tale. The only other candidate even contesting the state was Paul. Considering that Romney won this with 51% four years ago, and that this is a next-door neighbor to Mass, his showing there is pretty abysmal. The guy has not and cannot close the deal.

 

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