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Santorum Catches Romney in GOP Race Rick Santorum’s support among Tea Party Republicans and white evangelicals is surging, and he now has pulled into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. In polling conducted Feb. 8-12, 30% of Republican and Republican leaning registered voters favor Santorum while 28% favor Romney. As recently as a month ago, Romney held a 31% to 14% advantage over Santorum among all GOP voters. Santorum is now the clear favorite of Republican and GOP-leaning voters who agree with the Tea Party, as well as white evangelical Republicans. Currently,...

Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich. Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support. Santorum's winning an outright majority of the Tea Party vote with 53% to 22% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich. He comes close to one with Evangelicals as well at 48% to 20% for...

Santorum Now Leads Romney in Michigan February 11th, 2012 | Author: Ben Hart Rick Santorum now leads Mitt Romney in Michigan — the state where Mitt’s dad was governor, according to a tweet by Public Policy Polling. The PPP tweet says: “Santorum topping Romney on the first night of our Michigan poll. This may be the biggest surge yet.”

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...

PublicPolicyPolling@ppppollsReply Retweet Favorite · Open Missouri is Santorum 45, Romney 32, Paul 19

PublicPolicyPolling@ppppollsReply Retweet Favorite · Open Minnesota is Santorum 33, Romney 24, Gingrich 22, Paul 20. 35% still say they could change their minds though...

The multimillion-dollar contract to turn Maryland's travel plazas on Interstate 95 over to an out-of-state company is being challenged by a Bethesda-based firm that says the bidding process favored the eventual winner. HMSHost has filed a protest with the Maryland Transportation Authority, saying that bid specifications to replace the Maryland House and Chesapeake House were too vague and that Areas USA, a Florida company, was the only bidder allowed to sweeten its offer. "This is like a kick in the gut and we're trying to get our breath back," said Michael Jones, the HMSHost vice president who put the bid...

Maryland has taken the first step toward replacing its two travel plazas on Interstate 95 north of Baltimore with expansive, airy welcome centers filled with amenities and operated by a company with years of experience serving travelers. The two-year, $56 million project to rebuild Maryland House and Chesapeake House as a public-private partnership with Areas USA was approved Monday by the Maryland Transportation Authority board. The deal requires the approval of the Board of Public Works next month and review by the General Assembly. The state would retain ownership and oversight of the plazas, while Areas USA would operate and...

PPP's first post-South Carolina poll in Florida finds Newt Gingrich with a small lead. He's at 38% to 33% for Mitt Romney, 13% for Rick Santorum, and 10% for Ron Paul. Gingrich has gained 12 points since a PPP poll conducted in Florida a week ago. Romney has dropped 8 points. Paul and Santorum have pretty much remained in place. Their favorability numbers show similar trendlines. Gingrich's has increased 8 points from +15 (51/36) to +23 (57/34). Meanwhile Romney's has declined 13 points from +44 (68/24) to +31 (61/30). Here's the good news for Gingrich in this poll:

Newt Gingrich heads into South Carolina election day as the clear front runner in the state: he's now polling at 37% to 28% for Mitt Romney, 16% for Rick Santorum, and 14% for Ron Paul. Gingrich's lead has actually increased in the wake of his ex-wife's controversial interview with ABC. Although one night poll results should always be interpreted with caution, he led the final night of the field period by a 40-26 margin. One thing that continues to work to his advantage are the debates. 60% of primary voters report having watched the one last night, and Gingrich has...

Thursday may have been one of the most eventful days of the Republican campaign so far, but the state of the race in South Carolina didn't change much. Newt Gingrich continues to lead Mitt Romney by 6 points, 35-29, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum each tied for third at 15%. Revelations from the Marianne Gingrich interview haven't taken a toll on Newt's image yet. For the first time in our South Carolina tracking this month his favorability is better than Romney's, with 53% of voters holding a positive opinion of him compared to 51% for his chief competitor. Gingrich's...

Something to whet your appetite for tonight’s Thunderdome debate. Could Newtmentum really have shot him to a six-point lead after he trailed Romney by double digits just a few days ago? Note that PPP’s data comes from a one-day snapshot, which means a smaller-than-usual sample, which in turn means a larger-than-usual margin of error of five points. Newt’s may very well be leading right now, but … by six?Even so, as I write this, InTrade gives him a 42.5 percent chance of winning on Saturday. After Perry’s endorsement, Palin’s quasi-endorsement, and Santorum’s fade, who wants to bet against him? This...

PPP's first national poll of 2012 finds Barack Obama with his best standing against Mitt Romney since last May, right after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama leads Romney 49-44. It's not as if Obama's suddenly become popular. He remains under water with 47% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. Romney's even less popular, with only 35% rating him favorably while 53% have a negative opinion of him. Over the last month Romney's seen his negatives with independents rise from 46% to 54%, suggesting that the things he has to say and do to win the...

Raleigh, N.C. – The Republican caucus in Iowa is headed for a photo finish, with the three leading contenders all within two points of each other. Ron Paul is at 20%, Mitt Romney at 19%, and Rick Santorum at 18%. Rounding out the field are Newt Gingrich at 14%, Rick Perry at 10%, Michele Bachmann at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 4%, and Buddy Roemer at 2%.

Without another Ann Selzer Iowa poll until the first of the year, the political class is now largely analyzing the caucuses through robo polls, internal campaign surveys and good old-fashioned anecdotal reporting.It's the first of these that gets the most attention - and sparks the most controversy.After the Democratic-aligned PPP - which has gotten some important races right -- posted their latest Iowa survey last night showing Ron Paul staking out a lead, the pushback quickly surfaced.At issue: whether PPP's sample is too heavy on Democrats and independents and is therefore skewing the results to make Paul seem stronger. (Any...

It's been a bad week for Newt Gingrich in our early state Republican polling, but we still find him with a good sized lead nationally. He's at 35% to 22% for Mitt Romney, 11% for Ron Paul, 7% for Michele Bachmann, 6% for Rick Perry, 4% for Rick Santorum, 3% for Jon Huntsman, and 1% for Gary Johnson. On the surface that's good news for Gingrich but looking under the hood it's more bad news to some extent. We haven't done a national poll in 5 weeks, too long ago to make a good comparison, but on 6 state polls...

I’ve been telling people PPP’s polling Iowa was making nonsense predictions. The pollster has doubled down. I’m going way out on a limb here, and if the actual results refudiate what I’m saying then I’m going to have to take some taunting, but I just don’t see how this poll remotely reflects reality, and I’m flatly saying it’s not predictive of the caucus results. The facts: 597 LVs, no mention of mobile handling. MoE 4. The results of this poll are going to get huge play. While they predict less for Mitt Romney than the apparent Rasmussen outlier for Romney,...

Before you put too much stock in the most recent PPP poll, you may want to review this April 2011 Hill article:

Ron Paul, the once-forgotten presidential candidate, is picking up steam in Iowa and now appears poised to overtake frontrunner Newt Gingrich, according to a new survey released today from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling. The poll finds support for Gingrich has slipped to 22%, with Ron Paul just behind with 21%. Mitt Romney trails in third place with 16%. That's a five-point drop in favorability for Gingrich, who has raced to the top of the Republican presidential field over the past month. PPP found Gingrich's favorability numbers have fallen 19 points over the past week. Meanwhile, support for Paul is...

Pizza magnate Herman Cain leads the latest Public Policy Polling polls in Maine and North Carolina. In North Carolina, Cain pulled in 30 percent of the votes. In Maine, Cain garnered 29 percent of the votes. Cain’s poll performances may be impacted by a POLITICO report that revealed that the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO faced sexual harassment allegations in the 1990s. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took second place in the latest North Carolina PPP poll with 22 percent of the votes. In Maine, Gingrich finished in third place with 18 percent of the votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney...

Herman Cain's had a bad couple of news days that may or may not ultimately throttle his candidacy, but in our polling over the weekend he was continuing to fly high. In North Carolina, which a month ago was the first state we found him leading in, he'd built on his support over the last four weeks. And in Maine he held a small advantage over Mitt Romney, showing the ability to challenge Romney even on his home New England turf. In North Carolina Cain led with 30% to 22% for Newt Gingrich, 19% for Mitt Romney, 10% for Rick...

Businessman Herman Cain has risen to the top of a national poll of Republican primary voters, upending the GOP field yet again this cycle. Cain has the support of 30 percent of Republicans in the Public Policy Polling survey, trailed by Mitt Romney at 22 percent, Newt Gingrich at 15 percent, and Rick Perry at 14 percent. Cain is also the second choice of 24 percent of those polled — the highest of any candidate. In a two-person race, Romney would lead Perry 48-38, Cain would lead Romney 48-36, and Cain would destroy Perry 55-27. The poll was conducted before...

Rick Perry's led the Republican field in every Southern state that we've polled since he entered the Presidential race...until now. Mitt Romney continues to lead the way in Florida with 30% to 24% for Perry, 10% for Gingrich, 8% for Ron Paul, 7% for Herman Cain, 6% for Michele Bachmann, 3% for Jon Huntsman, 2% for Rick Santorum, and 1% for Gary Johnson.Perry had a poor debate performance in Florida Thursday night and our results suggest that the negative coverage he received from that did hurt him some in the state. We started this poll on Thursday night before the...

US Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry regularly touts his successes during his three terms as Texas Governor, but in Texas, there's not too much satisfaction with the work he has done, according to a new poll. The poll by Public Policy Polling showed that only 45 percent of the state's voters approve of Perry's job performance, while 48 percent say they don't approve, Politico reports. It, however, said that a majority of Texans supported Perry over US President Barack Obama. Perry leads Obama with 51 percent support to the President's 44 percent. The survey of 569 Texas voters was taken...

Mitt Romney has the lead in PPP's first Iowa poll since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump exited the race, but with six different candidates polling in double digits it's clear this thing is wide open. Romney polls at 21%. Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are tied for second at 15%. Newt Gingrich is 4th with 12%, Michele Bachmann 5th with 11%, Tim Pawlenty 6th with 10%, Ron Paul 7th with 8%, and Jon Huntsman 8th with 0% (only one respondent to the poll picked him.) 8% said they supported someone else or were undecided. Cain and Palin have been the...

Herman Cain’s scrappy campaign for the GOP presidential nomination is making an impression. From Public Policy Polling of North Carolina: Mitt Romney has the lead in PPP’s first Iowa poll since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump exited the race, but with six different candidates polling in double digits it’s clear this thing is wide open. Romney polls at 21%. Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are tied for second at 15%. Newt Gingrich is 4th with 12%, Michele Bachmann 5th with 11%, Tim Pawlenty 6th with 10%, Ron Paul 7th with 8%, and Jon Huntsman 8th with 0% (only one respondent...

President Barack Obama's approval rating with Ohio voters is below 50 percent but the Democratic president still appears to be in decent shape to carry the state in 2012 against potential GOP candidates, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday. The survey from the Democratic polling company, based in Raleigh, N.C., found that 46 percent of Ohio voters approved the presidents performance while 49 percent disapproved. However, in matchups against potential GOP, Obama prevailed. The closest race was with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with Obama leading 46-42 percent...

In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in Nevada by a whopping 12%, 55%-43%. By analyzing a recent PPP release, we note that Palin is within 4% points, or even tied depending on how deep your analysis goes. First, the PPP results show that Obama leads Palin by 50%-39% in the state, which isn’t even bad by any measure. But, like always, that poll is incredibly skewed towards Democrats as they make up a whopping 45% of those polled, to just 35% Republicans and 20% Independents. (In 2010, the Democrats only accounted for 35% of the vote and in Democrat-heavy...

A week ago, I called out Public Policy Polling as a political spin machine instead of credible pollster: Still, there are a number of things to consider before taking PPP at their word. After 2010 elections, which PPP did a good job polling, many have noticed a dramatic pull toward narrative building as opposed to informational reporting. Especially their Charlie Sheen/Sarah Palin gimmick (Nate Silver’s words, not mine). While PPP is associated with Daily Kos, they’re accuracy in 2010 elections won over my doubts. However, in a very new development, they are also teaming up with the SEIU and given...

OMG, I’m dying here. We’ve found a lot of brutal poll numbers for Sarah Palin so far in 2011: down in South Dakota, down in South Carolina, down in Arizona, only up by 1 point in Texas, only up by 1 point in Nebraska to name a few. But this has to be the worst- independent voters say they would support Charlie Sheen over Palin for President by a 41/36 margin. Seriously. Despite her deficit with independents Palin does lead Sheen 49-29 overall. We also tested Barack Obama against Sheen and the President leads 57-24. Sheen is one of the...

It's a well known fact that Sarah Palin is the most unpopular major political figure in the country...one thing that may be less well known is that one of the states where voters have the dimmest view of her is her own home state of Alaska. We've polled Palin's favorability in ten states over the last couple months. In Alaska just 33% of voters have a favorable opinion of her to 58% with a negative one. The only place where fewer voters see her positively than her own home state is dark blue Massachusetts. Democrats hate Palin in Alaska...

A PPP poll shows that Michele Bachmann is easily the first choice of Minnesota Republicans to run for the Senate in 2012. 36 percent say they prefer her as the nominee, compared to 20 percent for Tim Pawlenty and 14 percent for Norm Coleman. I have no idea whether any of these three is interested in running for the Senate in 2012. But I think this poll adds credence to some of my speculation about what to expect in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. I've been suggesting that, if she runs, Sarah Palin might be able to attract 30 to...

It's well documented that Sarah Palin has problems with Democrats and independents, but the first seven states where we've looked at the 2012 Presidential election make it clear that she has a Republican problem as well. It's not that Republicans don't like her- on our last national poll 68% rated her favorably, making her easily the most popular prospective 2012 candidate with Mike Huckabee at 63%, Newt Gingrich at 57%, and Mitt Romney at 56%. It's that a lot of the Republicans who don't like her- in contrast to the Republicans who don't like Huckabee, Gingrich, or Romney- aren't willing...

Barack Obama's best chance to win Missouri may have passed...unless the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. After losing the state by the smallest of margins in 2008 Obama is now unpopular in the state, with 52% of voters disapproving of him to only 43% who approve. He trails Mike Huckabee by 7 points (49-42) and Mitt Romney by 6 points (47-41) in hypothetical match ups. But Palin and Gingrich are even more unpopular in the state than he is and as a result he leads Palin by a 46-43 margin and trails Gingrich only 45-44. Huckabee is...

There were a ton of competitive Senate races in 2010 and the playing field could be even wider in 2012. Since the beginning of August PPP has polled on the approval ratings of 18 Senators who are up for reelection next time around. 9 of the 18 have an approval spread somewhere that's between +10 and -10, indicating the kind of ambiguous feelings toward an incumbent that can lead to a competitive race. The three least popular and conceivably most vulnerable Senators up next time that we've polled on are Joe Lieberman, Claire McCaskill, and Debbie Stabenow.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, shows West Virginia governor and Democratic Senate candidate Joe Manchin leading Republican John Raese by 3 points (48% to 45%), just a couple weeks after trailing Raese by a few points. It will be interesting to see if other pollsters pick up the same movement. Last week, Rasmussen showed Raese leading Manchin 50% to 44%. Nevada race remains tight. PPP shows Harry Reid leading Sharron Angle by 2 points in Nevada (47% to 45%). But Fox News finds Angle with 2 point lead (49% to 47%). From Fox's other polls out today (GOP candidates...

Raleigh, N.C. – If the election were held today, Robert Byrd’s U.S. Senate seat from West Virginia would be held by a Republican and someone other than Byrd for the first time in 52 years. Though Governor Joe Manchin is still very popular, with a stellar 59-32 approval rating, second among those PPP has measured this year to Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, he is trailing Republican opponent John Raese, 43-46, among likely voters.

Republicans more than likely cost themselves a Senate seat last night. Chris Coons begins the general election in Delaware with a 50-34 lead over Christine O'Donnell. Mike Castle would have led Coons by a 45-35 margin. While O'Donnell may have ingratiated herself to Delaware's small group of registered Republicans over the last month she's turned off everyone else. An August Daily Kos/PPP poll in Delaware found her favorability rating at 23/33. It's now 29/50. If Castle had won he would have received more Democratic support than any other Republican Senate candidate in the country. Now our polling suggests with O'Donnell's...

One billion muslims can't be wrong: Pak Minister wants Obama to be ''leader of all Muslims'' MSN Islamabad, Sep 2 (PTI) A Pakistani minister wants US President Barack Obama to offer Eid prayers at Ground Zero in New York and become the "Amir-ul-Momineen" or Caliph of Muslims. Minister of State for Industries Ayatullah Durrani, who belongs to the ruling Pakistan People''s Party, said the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr festival, expected to be observed on September 11, would be a "golden opportunity" for Obama to offer Eid prayers and declare himself the leader of all Muslims. "In this way, all the problems of...

Who was it, remind me, who was ahead of the curve on this? Who was it who called on her to gently appeal to the legalization crowd weeks before she ended up dropping that mini-bombshell on Napolitano’s show about marijuana laws being overenforced?C’mon. I have, like, three good ideas a year. Give a man some props. Among Republicans who say they’ve smoked Marijuana:Palin 25 Gingrich 22 Huckabee 17 Romney 17 Paul 8Among Republicans who say they have not smoked Marijuana:Huckabee 24 Romney 23 Gingrich 21 Palin 21 Paul 3 The sample size was only, er, 83 people, but even so,...

If you simply look at the national trends Democrats are in pretty bad shape right now. Barack Obama's approval numbers are hitting record lows in a lot of polling and the balance of the generic ballot surveys show Republicans in the lead. If you look at the trends in the actual races though things are getting sunnier for the Democrats. In June and July PPP polled eight Senate match ups that we had a previous poll to compare to- in all eight the Democratic candidate improved his/her position, by an average of 4.25 points. There's a variety of reason...

Mitt Romney's the favorite at this early stage in a couple key Republican primary states: Florida and Nevada. Romney came up short in Florida last time, but for now Republicans in the state prefer him to the other leading potential 2012 candidates. Romney gets 31% with Palin and Gingrich tied for second at 23% and Huckabee and Paul further back at 15% and 6% respectively. These numbers are good news for Romney and bad news for Huckabee and Palin...

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 Crist Looking Good Thanks mostly to support from Democrats Charlie Crist is the leader in the Florida Senate race. In the most likely match up against Kendrick Meek he gets 35% to 29% for Marco Rubio and 17% for Meek. His lead expands with Jeff Greene as the Democratic nominee. In that scenario Crist gets 38% with Rubio still at 29% and Greene at only 13%. Crist has become the de facto Democratic nominee and that's where most of his support is coming from. He's currently getting 44% of Democrats in the Meek match up, along...

No, this is not coming from Rasmussen or an internal GOP poll, but from the normally Democrat-sympathetic Public Policy Polling. PPP pitted Barack Obama against five potential Republican challengers for the 2012 presidential campaign, and the only one Obama beat was … Jan Brewer. Even that, PPP admitted, resulted from Brewer’s lack of name recognition. The headline, though, is Sarah Palin’s dead heat with the President:

Democrats are going to have to think really carefully about how they deploy Barack Obama for campaigning this fall. Polls we've conducted nationally and in several different states over the last few weeks have found that a candidate being endorsed by Obama is much more likely to elicit a negative response from Republican voters than a positive one from Democrats. PPP's most recent national survey found that while Obama had a positive approval rating at 48/47, only 33% of voters were more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by him while 48% said support from Obama would make them...

Turning to California, we noted last week that a poll, this one by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), indicated Carly Fiorina had moved ahead of Tom Campbell, albeit the two candidates were both within the margin of error. Still, the poll was significant in that Campbell had consistently been narrowly ahead of Fiorina for weeks and this was the first poll to reverse that trend. We wondered at the time if the poll could have been an outlier. Late yesterday Survey USA released a poll which threw cold water on the idea that the PPIC poll was an...

If the Republican candidates for President in 2012 were Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney who would you vote for? If Newt Gingrich, press 1. If Mike Huckabee, press 2. If Sarah Palin, press 3. If Ron Paul, press 4. If Mitt Romney, press 5. If you’re undecided, press 6 Gingrich ........... 16% Huckabee............ 18% Palin............... 29% Paul ................ 9% Romney ............. 25% Undecided............ 3% Compared to April's survey: Huckabee......... 17% Palin............ 25% Romney........... 44% Undecided........ 14%http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_FLCO_311.pdf April had no Gingrich or Paul as options It would appear that Gingrich played the Grinch, and took...

Tuesday, April 27, 2010 Brewer Gains Ground After Signing Immigration Bill [Daniel Foster] Public Policy Polling's latest shows that, in signing the immigration bill, Arizona governor Janice Brewer has shored up her support among Republicans in a difficult reelection bid against Democrat Terry Goddard: In the most likely match up for this fall Goddard leads Brewer 47-44. That represents a tightening since Goddard held a 46-36 lead over her last fall. Partisan preferences have hardened in the wake of Brewer's signing a tough immigration bill last week. Where Brewer was getting only 59% of the Republican vote in our last...

ARLINGTON, Va. - A lawsuit which could delay the Virginia HOT lanes project will go forward, a U.S. District Court ruled Thursday. The suit, filed by the Arlington County Board, says the high occupancy toll lanes planned for a stretch of Interstate 95/395 are intended to benefit mainly rich, white, suburban and rural residents of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. The new toll road is planned to run between Spotsylvania County and the D.C. line. Arlington says the added traffic would come at the expense of the county's diverse urban population and constitute a violation of civil rights. "We'll find out...

Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling sums up their polling data in the "Big Ten" midwestern states. If the election were held tomorrow, Democrats would lose big: It's really looking like a brutal year for Democrats in the Big Ten states. Barack Obama's approval numbers in the two places we polled this week- Wisconsin and Ohio- tell the story. He won Wisconsin by 14 points in 2008 but we find his approval there at a net -2 (46/48) for a 16 point drop since the election. It's a similar story in Ohio. He won there by four points in 2008...