A trio of national polls exploring the GOP primary hit our eyes on Thursday. If you are rooting for Romney or supporting Santorum, you can find a poll to fit your meme out of that smattering of data.
Take your pick:
- Holy smokes! Santorum is on fire! He is right on Romney's rear end in a national poll! (Rasmussen)
- Santorum is nowhere. It is still Mitt Romney's race to win, and Rick Santorum is all out to beat Rick Perry for fifth place (YouGov)
- Santorum is on the move, but Mitt Romney still has a solid lead. Stay tuned, though, because there is some legitimate post-Iowa love apparent for the new Anti-Mitt. (Gallup Tracking
Now that we've established the "lessons" from each poll, let's take a look at the actual numbers:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 27, Gingrich 19, Paul 13, Santorum 11, Perry 6, "Other" (presumably including Bachmann) 6, Huntsman 2
NATIONAL (Rasmussen): Romney 29, Santorum 21, Gingrich 16, Paul 12, Huntsman 4, Perry 4
NATIONAL (YouGov): Romney 30, Gingrich 17, Paul 13, Perry 8, Santorum 8, Huntsman 5, Bachmann 2
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Suffolk Tracking): Romney 41, Paul 18, Santorum 8, Gingrich 7, Huntsman 7, Bachmann 1, Roemer 1, Karger <1, Perry <1
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Washington Times/John Zogby Analytics): Romney 38, Paul 24, Santorum 11, Gingrich 9, Huntsman 8, Perry 1, Bachmann <1
We also, for the first time in a long time, have more than one piece of general election data. And, when you consider the source, the news is pretty darned good for el Presidente:
NATIONAL (Rasmussen): Obama tied with Romney (42-42)
NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Romney (49-40); Obama d. Gingrich (51-37)
Some analysis, which might help to explain the disparate GOP primary numbers, awaits you just past the jump.
So, is Santorum hot on Romney's heels, or is he still way back in the pack nationally?
Actually, the eccentricities of each poll goes a long way towards explaining their very different snapshots of the Republican presidential sweepstakes.
The Rasmussen poll is a one-day sample, conducted in the immediate wake of the respondents being inundated with news reports about Iowa and the coin flip outcome between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Therefore, it isn't all that surprising that the poll shows an enormous bump for Santorum, who got more media attention since Monday than he probably has received all cycle to-date.
The YouGov poll is an internet sample. While there has been enormous debate about internet samples (fueled in part by those disastrous Zogby Interactive polls in times of yore), YouGov did hit the fairway with quite a bit of frequency in 2010. However, if there is a consistent flaw in internet-based polls, it is the fact that they tend to have too much run-to-run consistency, because the pool of people who have signed up to be contacted for this kind of polling is a pretty limited group. So, they tend to be quirky (the YouGov sample, for example, has always liked Jon Huntsman more than more traditional methods of polling), and they seem to also change really slowly. Therefore, they might be a few weeks away from catching the Santorum way.
The Gallup tracker, for my money, is closest to the pin. Santorum is clearly on the move, having gone from 5 percent in the last all-2011 sample in the tracker, to 11 percent in the most recent incarnation. But, remember, the Gallup tracker is a multi-day sample. Therefore, it will be early next week before the respondents were all asked about the race after Santorum's performance in the Iowa caucuses. Where he stands then will be quite instructive.
Does Santorum have a legitimate chance of changing the game on the Republican side? I am slowly starting to become a believer, for three reasons. One: Bachmann hit the bricks, depriving anti-Mitt voters of one option. Two: Perry's bizarre in-and-out routine has to erode confidence in his bid, leading another anti-Mitt to the dustbin. Third: the Gallup tracker, as clearly as it shows forward movement for Santorum, also shows Newt Gingrich starting to skid. If that skid becomes a collapse, watch out. If Mitt Romney's ceiling really is 30-40 percent, he needs multiple opponents. Ron Paul isn't going anywhere, but he seems to have a ceiling around 20 percent in any given state, and a ceiling of maybe 15 percent nationally. Therefore, if Santorum becomes the third and final option, it could make things extraordinarily interesting on the GOP side.
On the general election front, I am pretty surprised that Rasmussen has not polled Obama-Santorum yet, in order to further the great conservative hope meme. I suppose there's always tomorrow. Rasmussen does support that meme indirectly, however, by releasing their weekly poll pairing Obama and Mitt Romney. After Romney took his biggest general election lead of the cycle in last week's offering from the House of Ras, the Ras-sies had the race tied this week at 42 percent.
YouGov, meanwhile, continues to show the same trends they have had throughout (kind of proving my point about the rigidity of internet-sample polls). They have the president with upside down approval numbers (43/47), but they have him with rather comfortable leads over either Mitt Romney (49-40) or Newt Gingrich (51-37).
On the future polling front: NBC/Marist is apparently going to release a New Hampshire poll tomorrow, while our polling buddies at PPP will be in the field in both New Hampshire (release late in the weekend) and (yay!) South Carolina, where they are launching a trio of tracking polls. PPP will also resume their polling in North Carolina, where they will test Santorum in a general election setting for the first time outside of his home state.