Romney holds small lead nationally [See Palin results in poll]

PPP's newest national poll finds that Mitt Romney leads with 34% to 31% for Rick Santorum, 20% for Newt Gingrich, and 9% for Ron Paul. But if Gingrich dropped out Santorum would have a small lead with 41% to 40% for Romney and 11% for Paul.

46% of Republican primary voters actually do think it's time for Gingrich to drop out, while 42% think he should continue on. 48% of his supporters would go to Santorum, while 33% would pick Romney. Gingrich dropping out being worth 4 points to Santorum is also what we found on our Illinois poll over the weekend- it would be a boost to Santorum, but not necessarily a game changing one.

A deeper look at the favorability numbers for the two front runners shows two campaigns headed in opposite direction. Romney's net favorability of +19 (54/35) is up 18 points from our national poll in February, a sign of increasing acceptance with the GOP base. Santorum is actually more well liked than Romney with a net favorability of +29 (59/30). But his numbers are headed in the wrong direction, a 13 point drop from his lofty +42 (64/22) standing a month ago.

Romney has much more solid support than either Santorum or Gingrich. 61% of his supporters say they'll definitely vote for him, compared to 48% of Santorum's and 45% of Gingrich's who express that sentiment. Among just voters whose minds are totally made up Romney's lead expands to 12 points at 42-30. It's a little remarkable that as long as this race has gone on, only 53% of voters say they're firmly committed to a candidate right now.

The talk of a brokered convention never seems to die down and one interesting finding on this poll was that Sarah Palin is far more popular than any of the actual Republican candidates in the race. Her net favorability is +48, with 68% of voters rating her favorably to only 20% with a negative opinion. That compares favorably to +29 for Santorum, +19 for Romney, and -26 for Paul.

Palin is someone GOP delegates might be able to unify around in the case of a hopelessly deadlocked convention. She is seen positively by Gingrich voters (85/7), Santorum supporters (80/10), and Romney ones (57/27) alike. That's a contrast to Romney who is disliked by both Santorum (38/48) and Gingrich (32/54) voters and Santorum who is disliked by Romney (38/48) voters and only seen narrowly favorably by Gingrich (46/42) backers.

One other side note after the Puerto Rico primary was in the spotlight over the weekend- only 22% of Republican primary voters support Puerto Rican statehood, while 49% are opposed to it and 29% have no opinion.

Full results here

From the article: "A deeper look at the favorability numbers for the two front runners shows two campaigns headed in opposite direction. Romney's net favorability of +19 (54/35) is up 18 points from our national poll in February, a sign of increasing acceptance with the GOP base

I call BS on that...it's a sign of the millions of Mitt's money spent on nasty negative ads.

From the article: "Romney has much more solid support than either Santorum or Gingrich. 61% of his supporters say they'll definitely vote for him,"....I wager that 45 of the 61% who say they'll definitely vote for Mitt are definitely mormons.

Yeah, but she has such unfavorables, disliked by the majority, total loser, who quit. Did I mention quit?

< / mouth breathing idiot lingo>

True, but in a general election in 2012 there would be nothing that Obummer could say about Sarah that has not already been said. No new news. However, Sarah has a lot to say about Barack. He is not such a lay up. I am surprised that not a single Democrat ran against him. In 1980 they knew they were looking at a dead duck in Carter.

It would appear that in many of the elections already held the voter turnout has generally been low. How does this figure into their crystal ball readings? I do remember that during our last governor’s race in Texas had even a reasonable percentage of the people who voted for Obama turned out and voted for Perry’s Democrat opponent, Perry would have lost. We simply have more registered Democrats than Republicans (sort of registered of course).

We Republicans are runnin’ a right entertainin’ freak show, ain’t we? Just to make it really interesting we occasionally drag Sarah Palin onto the stage and bark, “SEE the woman from Russia, Alaska wrestle Obama as she once did a wild grizzly!”

There ain’t enough room under the GOP tent left to cuss a cat.

In contrast Obama stands alone, elegantly untouchable.

When Sarah said she was not running she did promise that the Republican road to November would be very interesting. I have to admit, it hasn’t so far. There is still time for some very interesting things to take place. republicans know that they need energy, and I am not sure you are getting energized by Romney or Santorum. Something better HAS to show up.

“But if Gingrich dropped out Santorum would have a small lead with 41% to 40% for Romney and 11% for Paul.”

This is what’s key. The rest is all desiderata. There’s no question that Gingrich’s continued presence in the race is splitting the anti-Romney vote and Romney is squeaking through the breach. Even ostriches raise their buried heads in the sand to check out reality. It’s time to admit that Gingrich has been a saboteur. He enabled Romney to win in MI (by 3%) and in OH (by under 1%). Gingrich’s presence has been a boon to Romney and now actual exit polling data confirms this. In another poll as much as 57% of Gingrich’s votes would have gone to Santorum. With his campaign in the red, coming in 3rd or 4th in major primaries, his southern strategy reduced to dust, what purpose does he has in continuing except to keep his name in public? Because should he drop out, like Bachmann, Cain, and Perry before him, he’d be ignored and not talked about in the media. In any case after Romney’s thumpin’ win in IL, the Fat Lady now sings. The only question is who will be the VP pick. Anybody but Obama. We don’t want Obama making lifetime picks to the federal judiciary that will hammer in the last nail to the USA coffin he’s being constructing these past four years to say nothing of his socialist czars. And its time to put back the “Lady” in First Lady as well.

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