Posted on 01/12/2012 8:29:04 AM PST by Qbert
While South Carolina looks like a toss-up, according to the latest Insider Advantage poll, Florida looks like it could become a rout. The latest Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney with a bigger lead than he had in New Hampshire, beating Newt Gingrich by 22 points in a state that could spell the effective end of the primary:
Mitt Romney is now running away with the race in the latest Rasmussen Reports’ survey of the end-of-the-month Florida Republican Primary.
Coming off his decisive win in Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary, Romney earns 41% support with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a distant second at 19%. A new telephone survey of Likely Florida Republican Primary Voters finds former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum running third with 15% of the vote.Texas Congressman Ron Paul and former Utah Governor Jon Hunstman are next with nine percent (9%) and five percent (5%) support respectively. The two men finished second and third in New Hampshire where independents are allowed to vote in the primary. The Florida primary is open to Republican voters only. Texas Governor Rick Perry runs dead last among primary voters in the Sunshine State with two percent (2%) support. One percent (1%) prefers some other candidate in the race, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.
A loss in South Carolina might soften up that lead a bit for Romney, but that would have to be a very large tumble to lose the state. His opponents would have to win back huge chunks of demographics, including an 18-point lead among men and a 28-point lead among women, where Gingrich and Santorum tie at 16% to Romney’s near-majority 44%. Romney even gets the edge among very conservative voters, 29/26 over Santorum with Gingrich at 25%, but wins a majority of “somewhat conservative” voters at 53%, with Gingrich in second at 16%.
Nor is Gingrich likely to make a charge in Florida, according to favorability numbers in this poll os 750 likely GOP primary voters. He has a respectable 59/37 rating, but Romney’s is 76/21, with his 32% “very favorable” eleven points better than Gingrich’s. Perry has cratered in Florida, with a 43/52 favorability rating, which still beats both Paul (33/64) and Huntsman (34/51). Only Santorum challenges Romney in this measure with a 61/29 rating, but only 8% see him as the strongest candidate to challenge Obama, while a majority of 55% say that about Romney. Almost eight in ten expect Romney to win the nomination, and 87% believe that the likely Republican nominee is at least somewhat likely to beat Obama in November.
Assuming Romney wins in South Carolina, a win in Florida is almost assured. With numbers like this, don’t be surprised to see more GOP figures lining up behind Romney in an attempt to unify the party early and aim its rhetorical guns at Team Obama. That might be why John Bolton endorsed Romney late yesterday:
John Bolton, George W. Bush’s controversial Ambassador to the United Nations, will endorse Mitt Romney tonight, a Romney supporter told BuzzFeed.Bolton tweeted earlier this evening that he plans to make a major announcement on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
And while Jim DeMint has been careful to remain neutral, his advisors are climbing aboard Team Mitt, too:
A group of loyalists to South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint – including a top fundraiser for Rick Perry – will publicly endorse Mitt Romney’s presidential bid on Thursday, a source confirmed to CNN.Former South Carolina GOP Chairman Barry Wynn, Columbia businessman and fundraiser Peter Brown, and Columbia attorney Kevin Hall will announce their support for Romney Thursday.
Wynn’s move to Romney is striking. The Spartanburg financial adviser is a member of Perry’s finance team and traveled to Texas in August to meet privately with the governor before he announced his bid.
Jeb Bush will probably wait for South Carolina to vote, but I’d bet that he will endorse Romney shortly afterward.
The elite have spoken. And that includes Jim Demint in the shadows it seems.
Even if you combine the three “Not Romney” candidates they are behind. This is a very troubling development. For those that say we can wait to winnow out the field I hold Florida up as an example. Romney is winning in southern states due to momentum alone. Either you break the momentum or accept a Romney nomination. After SC two of the “Not Romney” candidates will need to get out if there is to be any chance of stopping Romney from locking this up.
This sucks. This just makes me sick.
“Rasmussen is under the control of Karl Rove’s Secret Mind Control Rays” response in 3....2....1....
We better concentrate on the house and senate races because I don’t think the GOP wants the white house. Things are such a mess that fixing them is going to cause some major hurt for all and the GOP doesn’t want the blame so they’d rather sit back and let the slide into socialism continue.
You have to wonder why Perry is still in this.
This is nauseating. Hopefully the right outcome in SC will bring some semblence of sanity to Florida.
It looks like The nominee is going to be Romney. The only question is, how much is his nomination going to hurt down ticket R candidates?
It’s going to hurt it a lot. We’re playing with fire if we think it’s a given we can hold the House. It’s not a myth that a different electorate comes out in a Presidential year than in a midterm.
Whatever Romney’s true numbers are in Florida, they will fall even more after South Carolina.
This is sickening. All these people lining up behind Romney because the establishment repeats over and over and over “he’s the only one who can beat Obama.”
Right now Perry has no chance. But I don’t mind him staying in at this point as he’s become the most aggressive in attacking Romney. He brutalized Romney on Hannity the evening of the NH Primary.
Citing his executive experience, successful economic record, thoroughly vetted background and solidly conservative credentials, Perry is the best man for the job. That so many voters can't see this is depressing. Perry remains the most conservative candidate in the race but, yes, his days are numbered. This, to me, says a lot more about my fellow "conservative" voters than it does about Rick Perry, a good man who deserved far more than his single digit polling has awarded him.
Another scam. They release a “poll” showing Romney getting 35% of the vote and he gets very close. They know that if the “poll” said he’d get 35.4467% and he got 35.4467% “we the people” might question it. They’ll also put out “polls” showing how much obama will win by. Just like the “poll” showing the economy on the mend and unemployment going down.
I’ve got to come up with a new tag line. I’m not sure a “second” or “third” or “fourth” party would do any good when they’re all controlled by the ONE party. Plus the ONE party controls the vote “counting” and the press.
If Romney does squeak out a win in SC and wins by anywhere near the number shown in this poll, the race is pretty much over.
The recent endorsements [Bolton, Todd Palin, et al] have been great helps to Romney.
If this holds up, the Elite GOP can again raise a middle finger to the Tea Party and conservatives and say, ‘just like in 2008, you’ll take who we give you and like him.’
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However, Romney is still only getting about 25-35% of the voting. A sincere, coalesced effort of the remaining 65-75%, excluding 20% for Paul, would still be enough to push a conservative to the forefront.
That means two of the three [Santorum, Gingrich, Perry] must drop out soon and throw their support to the remaining one. Will that happen or will we see a repeat of 2008 with hucka-hangers-on fighting to the bitter end and splitting the conservative vote just enough to give the Elites’ Preferred the edge?
what really makes me ill... I think early voting may have already begun in Florida (not sure)
Obama has already shown movement to downgrading the need for Congress. If he gets a second term, how much further might he go toward just having a Potemkin Village "peoples assembly?"
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