A new poll indicates that the big battle to win Michigan’s Republican primary has now tightened considerably with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney quickly picking up steam and former Senator Rick Santorum perhaps heading in this primary to the fate of other “anti-Romney’s” that shot up in the polls: he seems to be losing ground fast.
The Republican race for President in Michigan has tightened considerably over the last week, with what was a 15 point lead for Rick Santorum down to 4. He leads with 37% to 33% for Mitt Romney, 15% for Ron Paul, and 10% for Newt Gingrich.
If Gingrich — who just got a new infusion of cash from his prime backer -was out of the race Santorum would be in the lead.
The tightening over the last week is much more a function of Romney gaining than Santorum falling. Santorum’s favorability spread of 67/23 has seen no change since our last poll, and his share of the vote has dropped only 2 points from 39% to 37%. Romney meanwhile has seen his net favorability improve 10 points from +10 (49/39) to +20 (55/35) and his vote share go from 24% to 33%.
And here is the biggest bit of new in the long term: Romney’s gains have been due to him helping his own image, rather than hurt another candidate’s:
What we’re seeing in Michigan is a very different story from Florida where Romney surged by effectively destroying his opponent’s image- here Romney’s gains have more to do with building himself up.
Groups Santorum has double digit leads with include Protestants (up 47-30), union members (up 43-23), Evangelicals (up 51-24), Tea Partiers (up 55-20), ‘very conservative’ voters (up 54-23), and men (up 40-28).
Romney is leading the field with women (38-34), seniors (42-34), moderates (35-24), ‘somewhat conservative’ voters (40-34), and Catholics (43-31).
Newt Gingrich’s continued presence in the race is helping Romney a lot. If he dropped 45% of his supporters would go to Santorum, compared to only 29% for Romney and it would push Santorum’s lead over Romney up to 42-33. 47% of primary voters think Gingrich should drop out while only 40% believe he should continue on, but he’s certainly not showing any indication he’ll leave.
If this trend holds, 2012 could well be a repeat of 2008 when conservatives felt their candidates (who included Romney towards the end) couldn’t get the nomination because conservatives split their votes and Arizona Senator John McCain got the nomination despite being reviled by talk show hosts (who quickly fell into place once McCain got the nomination.).
Romney has taken a lot of old and new media ridicule for some of his rhetoric in Michigan as he tried to connected with voters. But it looks like the talk about the wonderful size of Michigan trees and how much he loves cars has been working.
UPDATE: TPM notes that Romney is hardly out of the GOP primary or general election woods, even in Michigan:
Santorum is also well liked by the Michigan GOP electorate: 67 percent of Republican primary voters have a favorable opinion of him, while 55 percent think the same about Romney. These two numbers are likely interrelated — pollsters often say that Americans make their decisions between candidates by choosing the one that’s closest to their ideological center. In Romney’s case, that’s an attribute in the general election and a detriment in the primary.
Consequently, it seems as though Romney’s extreme number of flip-flops on everything from abortion to his embrace of Republican icon President Ronald Reagan, have done more than that just inflict near-term damage — it’s created a very soft image of Romney’s conservative credentials in GOP voters’ minds.
It remains to be seen whether Romney can tamp down that hesitance amongst Republicans down with huge barrages of TV ads as he’s done to Gingrich (twice) and is currently attempting with Santorum.
Yet Romney also seems to be benefiting from a consensus among Republicans that he’ll eventually be the nominee. National CNN polling from last week showed that while Santorum’s wins in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri on February 7th have propelled him to the top of the pack, 55 percent of Republicans still thought Romney would eventually pull it out.
But as Romney improves in Michigan on the strength of his ad buys (at last count his campaign and allied super PACs are outspending Santorum three to one in Michigan, and much more elsewhere), it may make for a pyrrhic victory. After all, how much celebrating will team Romney be doing if the supposed Republican frontrunner pulls out a win in the state he grew up in? Win or not, the problem remains the same — Romney may be dragging a few conservatives over to vote for him, but he still hasn’t convinced enough Republicans that he’s a conservative, too.
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.