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.
That would be 1976. Keep in mind that going into the convention it was too close to call between Ford and Reagan. There was an internecine battle within the party between the liberal and Conservative wings and it looked as if the battle was going to lead to brokerage. Reagan then said he would choose a "moderate" as his running mate to ease the split. Conservatives were incensed by this and Mississippi turned to Ford and we were subjected to 4 years of the Peanut.
“Florida is still a ways away.”
Nope. Early voting begins next Monday.
No way. Alan West or Marc Rubio.. Play Obama at his own game.. Watch West destroy Dubiden up in the debates.
Yeah, and I'm starting to wonder if he's using it to keep the 'not-romny' candidates in. As long as that vote is spread, his 25/30% is enough to win the nomination.
Ok, that’s fair. I’ve had other Newt backers back out saying they’d rather support Paul than Santorum.
How does Perry damage Romney by sucking votes away from the other conservatives in the race?
Very depressing. They polled us last night and of course we went for Gingrich. But obviously, we’re in the minority.
I think Rush’s (misguided and confused) attack on Gingrich the other day influenced a lot of people here, btw.
“Beats head against wall”
We should all be beating our heads against the wall.
The Primaries are stacked by the GOP E to allow Democrats to crossover and Independents in to assist the Est. Moderate and defeat conservatives.
NH is actually worse, they are attempting to give open Primaries by putting in language that allows a defacto Open Primary, yet they can technically claim it is not.
The GOP E is going to be sorry they rammed Obama down our throats due to their ignorance in thinking that Romney could beat him.
Gingrich can save the day by winning SC and beginning the real one on one race.
Yes, those “heartless” voters mean business, but most of them are pretty liberal after all. They don’t seem to like our conservative choices, limited though they be.
I'm not so sure it was misguided. I try to keep an open mind on things like this -- I mean everything we hear comes through the press at some point -- And I admire what Newt did in the Clinton years. However, If you take the statements he has made against Capitalism AND the fact that he has repeatedly stated that Franklin Roosevelt is his favorite President AND that he likens himself to the father of Progressivism Teddy Roosevelt AND that he has described himself as a neo-Wilsonian ...
I have so many red flags going up it looks like a May Day parade in the USSR
I guess I should start wrapping my head around the idea that Romney is going to be the nominee against Obama.
There is no way Romney is a “broken glass” candidate.
Damn it!
Yeah, this is not good news to start the day.
Rasmussen’s FL poll is showing that the only way for a not-Romney candidate to pull ahead of Romney in FL would be to combine the votes of Newt, Santorum, Perry, and the undecideds, and get them all to agree on the same candidate. Either that, or Romney would have to take a huge fall due to some major gaffe or scandal, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.
John Bolton’s endorsement and the DeMint advisors tipping their hand towards him have certainly helped Romney. If Romney wins in SC, and Jeb Bush endorses him before FL, I think we’re gonna get rolled. If Rasmussen’s FL polling is anywhere close to accurate, it would take something crazy to pull out a win in FL for Gingrich (or any other not-Romney). The not-Romney would have to win SC fairly decisively. Assuring that would take something as dramatic as a Sarah Palin endorsement before the SC vote (not going to happen). Then, to counter a Jeb Bush endorsement for Romney going into FL, Marco Rubio would have to endorse the not-Romney before the FL vote (not going to happen).
We’re just going to have to hope that the Rasmussen poll is waaaaay off, and/or that something totally unexpected and unforeseen happens to the Romney campaign in the next two weeks.
I know a lot of us are supporting Newt, so I have a question for those supporters. Does anyone think that an endorsement by Sarah Palin would help Newt? I don’t know if she prefers Newt as a candidate, I am just wondering about a possible endorsement by her and what difference, if any, that might make.
Your analysis is correct but you have the names of the candidates reversed.
Newt Gingrich came in a distant 4th in Iowa and a distant 5th in N.H., despite endless hype throughout the month of December that he was the "front runner". He hasn't even won a SINGLE county yet and has way too many negatives and bad blood from voters to catch Romney at this pointy.
Rick Santorum tied with Romney with in Iowa (and I believe probably won by 20 votes if anyone bothered to scrutinize the results), winning the same number of delegates as him and won 62 counties, far better than any other candidate. This was all the more remarkable in that he had been polling 2% a month beforehand and the media ignored him. Now the results are in for N.H. and Santorum passed Gingrich AGAIN to be the top conservative vote getter AGAIN, coming in 4th despite no TV ads or campaign offices in N.H. Both Iowa and N.H. have shown the same thing -- of the candidates going strictly after the conservative vote, Santorum does best, followed by Newt, and then Perry is a far distant third.
Rick Santorum is still an underdog, but right now is the best bet conservatives have at stopping Romney (and the only conservative close to him in delegate count) no matter how much Newt's fans on FR want to ignore election results.
Time for some ego’s to get real. If Perry and Santorum really believe that Obama is as bad for the USA as they say, they need to fall on their swords and get behind Newt right freaking now.
Somehow, I don’t believe these numbers. Romney may be ahead, but not by this much.
Reminds me of Clinton parsing his words...one thing is for sure...O’Keefe’s video has put some of the questions about the NH primary out ‘front and center’.
Somehow, I don’t believe these numbers. Romney may be ahead, but not by this much.
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