Perry, Bachmann lead in July Daily Caller/Conservative Home Tracking Poll

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and the as-yet-undeclared Texas Gov. Rick Perry have unseated Mitt Romney as the front-runners in the latest Daily Caller/Conservative Home Tracking Poll.

This time the survey asked five questions: Who is your top pick for president? Who is the most electable? Who is your second choice? Who would do the best job handling the economy? And who would do the best job reducing spending in Washington?

Having finally conceded that Chris Christie and Paul Ryan are actually serious when they say they’re not going to run, we removed them from the ballot. We added Rudy Giuliani, who looks to be heading in the opposite direction.

Perry and Bachmann have set a new bar for the poll, garnering nearly 25 percent of the vote in the categories of electability and top pick.

This suggests that more Republican voters are becoming engaged in the race as they find candidates who actually excite them, as opposed to voting for the best option in a fairly unexciting field.

It’s indicative that while a large margin has consistently considered Romney to be the most electable candidate (a pragmatic metric), he has never particularly caught fire as voters’ top pick (a more idealistic metric of electability).

Romney was judged the most electable by 33.5 percent, but just 12.4 percent called him their top pick for the nomination. Perry, on the other hand, does well in both categories: He’s well-liked as a candidate, with 25.4 percent naming him as their top pick, and voters also see him as an electable candidate — with 28.5 percent calling him the most electable.

That combination would seem to bode well for Perry, should he decide to enter the race. Voters would get someone they see as capable of taking on President Obama, but for whom they wouldn’t have to compromise on their principles.

Bachmann also saw a huge gain in the Tracking Poll, as she has in most other polls released in the past two weeks. She is the top pick of 25.8 percent of those polled, while 21.1 percent called her the most electable.

She also seems to have firmly cemented herself as the Romney or Perry alternative, with 29.4 percent calling her their second choice.

Bachmann’s rise has to do with the very good show she has put on since formally launching her campaign last month. She has, to some degree, demonstrated that she can be a serious, credible candidate, and not just a sensationalist who generates buzz.

The main difference between Bachmann and Perry is that while Perry would enter the race with a cache of existing credibility, she has had to earn hers by proving herself to the electorate.

It’s worth noting that Rick Perry has been on the ballot since the very beginning, rating one to two percent of the vote each time around. His sudden, meteoric rise in the polls is notable because he has done nothing concrete to change voters’ opinions other than indicating that he was seriously considering a run.

This underscores what Mike Murphy has insisted to the Daily Caller on several occasions. At this point, he said, polls are as much an “applause meter/noise meter” as they are real indications of voter preferences. All of a sudden Perry is attracting serious media attention and generating significant hype among Republicans, as everyone waits to see whether or not he’ll jump into the race. Correspondingly, his poll numbers have skyrocketed.

Perry and Bachmann are also both perceived to have strong economic credentials. They lead the pack as the candidates who would do the best job with the economy and keep Washington spending under control.

Twenty-four percent of respondents said Perry would do the best at dealing with the economy, while 18.5 percent chose Bachmann, 16.7 named Romney, and 16.0 percent went with Herman Cain.

On reducing spending, Bachmann leads with 28.7 percent saying she would do the best job. Perry trails her at 17.2 percent, followed by Herman Cain at 14 percent. In this category, Romney falls to 8.5 percent, trailing Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, a fact which illustrates that voters see reducing spending and doing a good job with the economy as two very distinct issues.

The big loser in this poll is Herman Cain. Though he continues to be in the top few in a number of categories, his numbers have fallen significantly since the last tracking poll was conducted. In June, 16.1 percent of respondents called him their top pick; this month, just 9.6 percent said that. The perception of his electability has taken an even bigger hit: 12.1 percent called him the most electable in June, while this month just 4.4 percent said he was the most electable.

Tim Pawlenty, who is seen as the candidate who is the most threatened by Bachmann and Perry — with Perry ousting him as the logical Romney alternative, and Bachmann outshining him in the crucial state of Iowa — has a generally mediocre performance in the poll. Originally touted as the candidate who could win by being ‘everybody’s second choice,’ Pawlenty does perform fairly well in that category: He is the second choice of 7.9 percent, putting him just above Palin, but below Bachmann, Perry, Herman Cain, and Mitt Romney.

Pawlenty gets no more than 2.4 percent of the vote in any other category on the survey, though that doesn’t seem to be directly correlated with Perry and Bachmann’s rise. He’s within two percent of his performance in earlier polls, however, so this is not a significant change.

Assuming the respondents didn’t vote for her in both catagories, I read the Michelle Bachman is the first or second choice of 55% of those polled.
I think she’s done a pretty good job, so far, making the case against raising the debt ceiling but I want some real numbers. For instance, I read that the federal govenrment takes in about 200 billion per month and needs between 15 and 20 billion to pay the interest on the national debt. I’d like to know what the military payroll and social security requirements are. My guess is that the three total way less than 200 billion so Obozo’s threat of not paying SS checks is a political scare tactic. The more of his tripe she can expose, the higher her numbers will go.

Useful for showing how the anti-Mitt vote will break. I’d be curious to see what the regional breakdown is. I’d guess it shows that Bachmann and Perry would split Middle America roughly along the boundaries of the old confederacy. Perry’s 2nd choice numbers are pretty weak. Probably due to him being strong on his home turf, but fairly weak everywhere else.

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