lunes, 13 de febrero de 2012

PPP: Santorum 39%, Romney 24%, en Michigan



Public Policy Polling:
Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.

Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.

Santorum's winning an outright majority of the Tea Party vote with 53% to 22% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich. He comes close to one with Evangelicals as well at 48% to 20% for Romney and 12% for Gingrich. And he cracks the 50% line with voters identifying as 'very conservative' at 51% to 20% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich.

Santorum's benefiting from the open nature of Michigan's primary as well. He's only up by 12 points with actual Republican voters, but he has a 40-21 advantage with the Democrats and independents planning to vote that pushes his overall lead up to 15 points. Santorum is winning by a healthy margin in every region of the state except for Oakland County, where Romney has a 40-26 advantage, and the area around Lansing where Paul actually has an advantage at 30% to 27% for both Romney and Santorum.

(...) For all that, Santorum probably shouldn't get too comfortable. There is a lot of potential for fluidity in the Michigan race, with only 47% of voters saying they're strongly committed to their candidate while 53% are open to changing their minds in the next two weeks.

Romney's support is a little more firm with 52% of his voters saying they'll definitely end up supporting him compared to 46% who say that for Santorum. This situation is reminiscent of what happened in Florida right after Newt Gingrich's big win in South Carolina- he took the lead then quickly lost it in a big way after coming under attack by Romney. Given how open voters are to changing their minds a repeat of that in Michigan would not be a huge surprise.

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