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.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.