Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s national and Iowa polls are sliding but the question is whether he is still high enough up there so that the impact will not be significant:
Newt Gingrich’s support in the race for the Republican nomination fallen quickly since national Gallup polls of Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters in early December. And as Republican contenders hit the final stretch before the Iowa caucuses, polls in the state show Gingrich with a much less commanding lead than earlier this month.
At his peak in early December, Gingrich held a wide 15 percentage point advantage over second place Mitt Romney in Gallup polls, but the most recent tracking poll (concluding Wednesday) found Gingrich leading by only 5 points. No candidate has benefited greatly from Gingrich’s slide – Romney’s support is two points higher than it was before – but the number of Republicans who are unsure how to vote has grown slightly.
After holding double digit leads in several Iowa polls earlier this month, more recent surveys depict a closer race. An American Research Group poll of likely caucus-goers completed last weekend found Gingrich at 22 percent support, somewhat lower than 27 percent in late November and now holding a narrow 5-point advantage over Ron Paul and Romney. Automated surveys conducted this week by Rasmussen, PPP and Insider Advantage show wide-ranging results, but none show Gingrich as strong as some polls earlier in December.
Despite the fluid forecasts, Gingrich has some reason for solace. Gallup finds his numbers are strongest among conservatives, older voters and rank-and-file Republicans, which are groups that tend to vote more regularly in Republican primaries. Moderates and independents who lean toward the Republican Party are less supportive of Gingrich, but tend to make up a smaller portion of GOP primary voters. Gingrich ran strongly among conservatives and older voters in a Post-ABC Iowa poll earlier this month.
The fact is: many moderates have been formally read out of the Republican Party and their lack of clout in the party is increasingly making it a less attractive party.
Meanwhile, the fact that key pegs of the country’s conservative establishment are making it clear that they consider Gingrich a poor and even awful candidate will not likely help him build new support. Time’s Mark Halperin, for instance, offers this recap of Gingrich’s problems with the Wall Street Journal:
Ed board questions Gingrich’s dealings with Freddie and the “candor” of the ’12er’s. story
WSJ: “The real history lesson here may be what the Freddie episode reveals about Mr. Gingrich’s political philosophy. To wit, he has a soft spot for big government when he can use it for his own political ends.”
More from the op ed: “Mr. Gingrich would help his candidacy if he stopped defending his Freddie payday, admitted his mistake, and promised to atone as President by shrinking Fannie and Freddie and ultimately putting them out of business.”
Newt calls Freddie attacks “wildly inaccurate” in tele-town hall: “I have never once advocated that people do something for Fannie or Freddie. I do not in any way work on influence, per se.”
UPDATE: It’s worth adding a few chunks of George Caudill’s and Mark McKinnon’s post in The Daily Beast about Gingrich having peeked:
Get ready for a train wreck out of Iowa.
Newt Gingrich is starting to lose steam. Brain power alone may not be enough to make it up the hill; attacks are creating too much drag.
The former House speaker has peaked, and there’s nowhere to go but down. (With the SEC suing former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac execs, Gingrich’s purported $1.6 million payday from the mortgage giants may speed his decline.) Politics is all about momentum and timing. You want your curve headed up, not down, as you go into Election Day.
It’s highly likely that Ron Paul will win in Iowa. The caucuses are about passion, and Paul’s hearty band of supporters stick like glue. He is their first, second, and third choice. His ceiling may not ever get very high; his floor will never get very low either.
After some additional analysis they reach this conclusion:
It’s not a stretch to imagine a five-way finish in Iowa, with Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Perry, Bachmann, and maybe even Santorum, all finishing with between 10 and 20 percent. Though Iowa propelled a little-known peanut farmer to the presidency, it also gave us President Dick Gephardt and President Mike Huckabee.
Therefore, the verdict is likely to be muddled coming out of Iowa. So, then it’s on to New Hampshire. And we could see a scenario there where Romney, Gingrich, and Jon Huntsman all finish with around 25 percent, although this could be where Huntsman catches fire. But still, it’s more muddle.
So, on to South Carolina, where Gingrich is strong, and Perry’s message is a natural fit. But Romney was just endorsed by the state’s governor, Nikki Haley. So, potentially more muddle. Next is Florida, where Newt is strong but likely to fade, and where Romney will have a solid base. Romney will win Michigan, but as a favorite son of a former governor, he won’t get much juice out of it. So still, the primary muddles on.
With proportional representation (meaning that unlike previous elections where if a candidate won a state he’d win all the delegates, now the pre-Super Tuesday states’ candidates are awarded delegates based on their percentage of the vote), there is every reason for “second-tier” candidates to keep chugging along as accumulated delegates are strong political chips that may be played down the line.
In the end, the Iowa roundhouse may only delay the real train wreck to come.
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.