CBS News/New York Times Poll: Santorum Pulls Ahead of Romney Nationally
The Rick Santorum surge continues — as does the Newt Gingrich collapse. What’s important in polling is whether various polls show a trend. And this one is the latest to show Santorum gaining steam, fast:
Rick Santorum has pulled slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in Republican primary voters’ preference for the presidential nomination, a national CBS News/New York Times Poll shows.
Ron Paul is now in third, followed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
More than ever, Gingrich will be pressured to pull out of the race. The key is if he runs out of money and his wealthy casino owner donor Sheldon Adelson decides to stop writing checks. But support? Gingrich’s campaign seems to be over and it’s hard to image that he’ll have another debate moment that elevates him to where he was before.
Just three points over Romney, Santorum’s lead in the national survey is within the poll’s margin of error, but after wins last week in three states, 30 percent of Republican primary voters now say they support Santorum for the nomination.
The socially conservative former Pennsylvania senator received the backing of just 16 percent of Republican primary voters in a similarly worded question last month, leaving him in third place behind Gingrich.?
Romney, who won the Maine caucuses on Saturday, has held fairly steady since January, while Gingrich’s support has fallen by 11 points.
Romney’s problem is that he is not steadily expanding his constituency within the GOP. He is severely stuck.
Santorum receives strong backing from conservatives, tea party supporters and white evangelicals.
Self-identified conservatives divided their support among the candidates in January, but in this poll they appear to be coalescing solidly behind Santorum. He receives far more support from this group than Romney does, and conservative support for Santorum has increased since last month.
Support for Gingrich among conservatives is now half of what it was in January, just before his victory in the South Carolina primary.
Look for the clamor to grow for Gingrich to drop out and for the Romney camp to begin pulling out all stops against Santorum.
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I wish I could stop laughing long enough to write something semi-coherent.
But I can’t.
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater, 1964
And in 2012 it has come down to extremism in the pursuit of social decisiveness is no vice, moderation in search of the maximum return for the wealthy is no virtue.
Someone who believes that there is chance that they will support whomever is the eventual Republican nominee please outline your reasoning. To me it seems to be a clear choice between not voting for them because they back social decisiveness, empathizing the differences that divide us as a nation, or because they want to continue and double down on economic policies that have repeatedly failed and whose only support seems to come from the people who profit from them, a clear case of the means justifying the ends.
Something about the GOP’s never ending hunt for an anti-Romney reminds me of how Lucy would always get Charlie Brown to try and kick the football. Once again a really awful candidate has taken a lead over Romney. A guy whose flaws are myriad, his positions narrowminded, and his talking points so ultra conservative that he just can’t win in a general. Yet another candidate whose popularity had dwindled to the point where he could not hold elected office anymore is held up as the, temporary, standard bearer for the GOP.
For starters, the man has made it clear that he considers gay people to be in the same category as pedophiles. His view of America is the typical hardline conservative talking points of rich white guy entitlement mixed with the ideal that the founding fathers really, really meant for this to be a christian theocracy. He was literally polling single digits up until they GOP ran out of other candidates so in what has to be the most predictable thing to happen in this crazy primary race, he is now taken seriously. For now. How many times is the GOP going to try kick that ball when they KNOW its not going to be there?