Thursday, December 1, 2011

Gingrich Opens Up 21 Point Lead Over Romney

Newt Gingrich
﻿﻿﻿Okay, I'm officially not buying the conventional wisdom that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the inevitable nominee of the Republican Party.

According to a poll by Rasmussen Reports taken on November 30th, former Speaker Newt Gingrich has opened up a 21 point lead over Romney.  In the poll conducted on November 30th, Gingrich had 38% of the support and Romney only 17%.  In the four most recent national polls, Gingrich's leads have been 4, 4, 4 and 1.

Interestingly, Gingrich's speaking the truth about immigration does not seem to have hurt him at all.  Romney, on the other hand, appears to be in serious trouble.  The Republican electorate appears to be coalescing behind Gingrich.


Indy Student said...

He isn't inevitable, but it's largely assumed that Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry are all competing for the same portion of the vote.

Ron Paul is his own category because his supporters are more loyal to him and aren't likely to support any other Republican.

So in the case of Iowa, if all these guys are staying in the race, Mitt Romney could very well pull off a plurality of the vote in Iowa with very little effort and win the caucuses.

Add that to a win in New Hampshire, he'll be hard to stop.

Now, I'd be curious Paul, how can someone stop Romney in New Hampshire. Besides Romney, only Paul, Huntsman, and long shot Fred Karger have any serious campaign presence there. And Huntsman and Paul haven't and aren't likely to be benefits of the Not-Romney bump that Perry, Bachmann, etc... have benefitted from.

Paul K. Ogden said...


I don't see any scenario by which Romney wins Iowa. He'll be lucky to finish in the top 3. I think he's pretty much written Iowa off.

New Hampshire is a different story.

While the people you mention are competiting for the same portion of the vote, it just happens that portion of the vote is about 75% of the Republican electorate. Romney is not making any progress cutting into that.

If you look at state by state polls, Romney is well behind in most states.

I think the field can concede NH to Romney and he still loses. With the exception of Michigan (where Romney has family political connnections), Romney appears to only have majorithy support in a few New England states. Even California, he's in a tossup.