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Mitt Romney currently holds a very small lead over Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary. From PPP:
Mitt Romney continues to hold a modest lead in South Carolina’s Republican primary for President. He’s at 29% to 24% for Newt Gingrich, 15% for Ron Paul, 14% for Rick Santorum, 6% for Rick Perry, 5% for Jon Huntsman, and 1% for Buddy Roemer.
Things haven’t changed too much at the top in the last week. Romney is down 1 point from his pre-New Hampshire standing, while Gingrich has gained a point. There’s more movement in the middle. Paul has gained 6 points to move into 3rd place, while Santorum has dropped by 5 points. Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman have each picked up a single point and remain in 5th and 6th place respectively.
Rasmussen also found a similar result in their South Carolina poll. They have Romney leading with 28 percent and Gingrich in second with 21 percent. Paul and Santorum are tied for third with 16 percent.
Looking at the primary schedule, South Carolina is probably the most inherently unfavorable state for Romney until Super Tuesday. If Romney is able to win a small plurality there, most people will probably consider the race effectively over.
This is probably the last chance a Gingrich or Santorum has to get the anti-Romney vote to coalesce around one of them before Romney becomes the inevitable nominee in most people’s minds.
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Santorum wins social conservatives endorsement.
I predicted that by February the right wing talkers on Fox and radio would be supporting Romney.
It started already. This poll is only one of many. Others show a bump for Romney. When Gingrich and Perry began attacking him for his vulture capitalism it got lots of attention and Gingrich got a bump and Romney went down. But then what I predicted started as the talkers started defending Romney and attacking Gingrich because Romeny is the true free marketer and Gingrich was “acting stupid” and “attacking Capitalism.”
Rush defended Romney!
After that Romney’s bump happened.
It’s not that I’m that great at predicting things. It’s just the script is so obvious and cliched. Oh well.
Huff Post saying Romney lead growing.
With Soc. Conservative’s going Santorum it’s over for the Puke.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/poll-update-1-romney-open_n_1206549.html?igoogle=1
It’s a race against the 1%
Tony Perkins? Pah!
It’s fine with me if Santorum’s campaign keeps those people busy.
It’s a good test to see how the wingnuts do. If they can’t prevail in SC, they can’t win anywhere.
The pic is teh awesome – latin scholar sez “animis opibusque parati” translates as “prepared in mind and resources.”
Umm hmmm.
But, wouldn’t it be great to have something to distract them from other issues, like Pro-Choice movements?
The longer they are busy with Anything else, the better.
And, of course, you are correct, that it will be a bellweather.
Each time I hear Romney referred to as the “inevitable” candidate, I wonder just who has decided that. On the other hand, being “inevitable” is, in this case, not unlike being “unavoidable”. Sort of like a traffic accident. I think I can already hear the screeching of tires and the sound of broken glass.
Say he’s got 37% and Newt is in fourth.
Well you gotta give Obama a challenge and Mittens is a fast talking top dog.
Newest Reuters poll puts him at 37. It seems like an outlier since the support level is so high. Santorum and Paul get 16. Newt gets 12. Paul’s numbers are in line with recent polling data so he may very well place in SC. Santorum’s aren’t that far off either. If this is correct for Gingrich this is a huge drop of 9 points. Attacking Romney appears to have been an incredible tactical error(which explains him apologizing and backing off.)
I still think the poll is an outlier in terms of Santorum and Gingrich though since we’re talking double digit movement.
Tangential–
- excerpt from “Twitter Just Changed Canadian Politics Forever” (TechVibes.Com, by Knowlton Thomas, Jan. 13, 2012)
Obama’s problem in 2012 is, NOW we know who he is. I don’t think he could beat McCain this time around,
It may be an outlier but it’s interesting that all day yesterday every hourly newscast I heard yesterday cited that particular poll result. It could be because it’s the most recent, but it sort of struck me that they were reinforcing the meme of Romney inevitability. Certainly there wasn’t even a passing mention that other polls showed the margin to be smaller.
It sort of reaffirmed my belief that polls are more a tool to persuade voters than a reflection of their preferences.