Results from new Rasmussen poll of likely GOP primary voters: Rick Santorum (39 percent), Mitt Romney (27 percent), Newt Gingrich (15 percent), and Ron Paul (10 percent). A couple of interesting details from the poll:
Perhaps more tellingly, Santorum now trounces Romney 55% to 34% in a one-on-one matchup among likely GOP primary voters. This is the first time any challenger has led Romney nationally in a head-to-head match-up. Santorum also leads Romney head-to-head in Michigan.
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Forty-one percent (41%) continue to view Romney as the strongest potential candidate against President Obama, but that’s down from 49% last week. Twenty-five percent (25%) now see Santorum as the strongest general election candidate, up from 10%. Paul remains the candidate that Republican voters by far consider the weakest national candidate.
This poll, like the CNN/ORC poll released yesterday, suggests that a significant chunk of Santorum voters don’t think he’s the strongest candidate to go up against Obama. Yet they’re still willing to support him, which means that the Romney campaign may have difficulty successfully attacking Santorum on grounds of electability.
Yes, but if I were the White House I wouldn't pop the champagne corks yet....Romney could still recover and become the GOP Nominee and make it an actual fight for the President. But it sure sounds hopeful.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGo Rick! Now we can win back the House!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo after "the base" loses this election by turning to Santorum, who will they blame this time? The establishment didn't pick a good enough, electable candidate that appealed to the base so the base had to commit suicide to teach the establishment a lesson?
What a shame... we can only hope these polls are as temperamental as Newt...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Paul remains the candidate that Republican voters by far consider the weakest national candidate."
This proves to me that, politically speaking, Republican voters are out of touch. Don't we use facebook and twitter? Do we go on youtube? Do we watch the news? What are we basing this feeling that RP can't win on?
It's not the polls, since polls continue to show that Mitt and RP are the only candidates who can go head-to-head with Obama (besides a few random outlier polls that say Santorum has a chance.) Newt is toast vs. Obama.
If we're going to base our vote on who can beat Obama, we need to be realistic about who can beat Obama. Historically, it's been based on who can get the independent vote and who can bring in the base. RP's the only candidate who is getting any independents right now, and Mitt can (kinda, sorta) bring the base. Santorum and Newt are losers with independents, and would have a hard time with the base as well.
Let's be realistic here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet's be realistic here.
Haha. Yes...ah...let us do that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRight this second, he's down, yes. That hasn't been the trend over the last few months, though. Romney's down as well, and Rick is up as high as he's ever been, and he's still getting beaten handily by Obama.
(Also, you're link was broken on my browser. I looked at the source and found this, though:
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseyou're = your
Bah.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for the link fix. Look, you Ron Paul people give the impression Harry Potter threw a cloak of invisibility over your man last summer and he hasn't been able to get it off. His views are well known. Have been for a while. That's why he's always in charge of the very bottom of the (R) presidential polls.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm not pretending that Paul is popular amongst Republicans generally; I know he's not. However, if the main issue is defeating Obama and isn't whether or not we want a president made in our perfect image, then Paul's general electability needs to be taken more seriously.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is not good for the GOP.
This is so not Presidential "President" Santorum: External Link
My guess Obama creams Santorum in the general election with stuff like this.
Well it's not so bad GOP there's alway 2016.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSantorum better be ready because it has started:
Santorum residency issue parallels Virginia story
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Santorum charity spent most of its money on admin, political friends
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Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special'
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Wow, apparently Republican voters want another round of G.W. Bush's nation-building, big-government-style conservatism, only without the tolerance. If this and Obama are the only choices Americans are willing to consider, then we should admit decline is here to stay.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuick, someone tell the NRO editors to put an editorial online explaining how unelectable Santorum is, or how progressive, or how...anything...as long as it keeps him from stealing the nomination from Mr. Electable Inevitability. Or is it Mr. Inevitable Electability?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis was a Rassmussen poll - not NRO editorial board. And the poll is troubling - GOP voters picking the candidate they think is not likely to win. That is irrational, and hopefully people will figure that out. At the very least voters should at least be thinking their guy has the best chance of winning.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe polls are all over the place -- especially the Rasmussen poll. As recently as three weeks -- three weeks! -- ago, the Rasmussen poll had Gingrich leading Romney by 7%. Two weeks later, they had Romney up by 7%, and now they have Santorum up by 12%.
Anybody who thinks they can spot a meaningful trend in those poll results is crazy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReality is that Obama will be reelected. That being the case, we might as well send a real conservative into the fray. We have nothing to lose.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"We have nothing to lose."
Really? How 'bout the House, or at a minimum any hope of taking back the Senate?
The chances of unseating any elected incumbent are poor, historically. If they weren't, it would have been done more than nine times in 230+ years. But, there are losses, and then there are losses. For example, Bob Dole and John Kerry lost in their respective years. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern lost in their respective election years. Mitt Romney presents the GOP with a possibility for the former rather than the later. Rick Santorum probably doesn't.
Why is that important? Look at the down-ballot losses for the challenger's party in the years 1964 and 1972, but particularly in 1964. The biggest problem with Goldwater's loss wasn't losing the White House, it was giving LBJ super-majorities in both houses of Congress. It is incredibly rare, perhaps unprecedented, when a party's nominee loses by seven or more points at the top of the ticket and then goes onto pick up seats in the Senate and/or the House. McGovern was lucky insomuch that when he lost, the Dems still managed to pick a a seat or two in the Senate, although they lost a dozen or more in the House.
If Obama wins by 10-points or more - which is the margin that a Santorum nomination portends - it's a certainty that Obama would keep the Senate, and a more remote possibility that he takes back the House, but you could certainly see some erosion in that 49-seat GOP advantage.
But sure, other than that, there's nothing to "lose" sending a "real conservative" (a real conservative who spent money like a drunken sailor his entire political career) into the fray.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI firmly believe we risk far less down-ballot losses with Rick than with Romney. You are concerned about women voting for Obama over Rick, whereas I am concerned about people staying home IN DROVES if Romney is the candidate.
I also think it is absolutely laughable you would predict Obama by TEN points over Santorum, an even bigger victory than he had as Mr. Hope and Change against our grumpy old moderate that refused to say anything negative against Obama in 2008.
Your moving into the hate category with Rick and it is clouding your analysis.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseScott,
This isn't 1964. The nation is more evenly split than it was in 2006 or 2008. The so-called "indpendents" abandoned Obama in 2009-2010 due to ObamaCare. Now a CBS poll has these very same independents rushing back into the Obama fold because of the GOP's continued instringience over ObamaCare and civil liberties. Yet, in other polls than in recent weeks, over 60% of the voters want ObamaCare gone. Mitt is as close to a Dem as you can get. To give the voters a choice of Obama or Obama Lite isn't a choice at all.
BTW, the GOP will keep the House in 2012, thanks in large part to redistricting and Obama's own actions. The Senate Dems have to defend 23 seats this year to 12 for the GOP. Even if Obama wins there is better than a 55-45 chance that the GOP re-takes the Senate.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"This isn't 1964."
Yes, the country is more diverse than it was in 1964 and minority voter is at participation at record highs. 2008 all but erased the black/white participation deficit. With Gallup currently measuring black voter intensity as the highest level of any demographic, that's not likely to change in 2012.
What hasn't changed since 1964 is math, and all I care about is the math. John McCain, a man who enjoyed a positive approval rating on election day, and a man that was seen by over 60% of the country as being qualified for the office, lost by 7-points. And, he lost to a guy who hadn't been in the Senate for even four years.
If you don't think that a 10-point loss isn't possible - ostensibly because this isn't 1964 - then you're not paying attention.
Santorum is not going to appeal to minorities, at least not to a greater degree than Romney is. However, there is absolutely no evidence that Rick Santorum is going to do better with educated suburbanites than Mitt Romney will. If Obama does the same with minorities as he did in 2008, and he does better with the white suburban voter than he did in 2008, a 10-point victory is almost a foregone conclusion. Rick Santorum makes Obama that much more competitive in the suburbs.
"BTW, the GOP will keep the House in 2012, thanks in large part to redistricting and Obama's own actions. "
Have you looked at the generic Congressional ballot polls recently?
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Believing that there is no way the GOP loses the House, no matter who the nominee is, is delusional.
"Even if Obama wins there is better than a 55-45 chance that the GOP re-takes the Senate."
Can you point to a single year when the party that lost the White House went onto pickup four seats? I can't. The closest I can see is in 1940; FDR carried the White House by 10-points, but the Dems lost three Senate seats. Of course, they went from 69-seats to 66-seats, so it wasn't very painful for them.
Someone coined the phrase "coattails" for a reason, and that reason is when the top of the ticket wins convincingly, the lower half of the ticket generally does pretty well to.
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