Depending on the outcome of tonight's GOP debate, every dollop of data that is linked below may be absolutely obsolete by Sunday morning. Such has become the nature of this Republican primary, where the GOP electorate has shown all the loyalty of an indecisive teenager when confronted with multiple date prospects on a Saturday night.
In Florida, after swooning for Newt Gingrich for what appeared to be about 24-48 hours, the pendulum has swung back strongly in favor of Mitt Romney in the Sunshine State. Meanwhile, nationally, yesterday's apparent halt to the Mitt Romney slide in the Gallup tracking poll apparently last exactly one day, as he slid even further on Thursday. That, coupled with the new numbers from NBC/Wall Street Journal, tell us that Newt's fortunes might be flagging in Florida, but his Newtmentum has not abated nationally.
And with tonight's debate being the last scheduled showdown for nearly a month, this might be Gingrich's last, best shot at dropping the hammer on his rival for the GOP nomination.
We'll know by this weekend if he managed to do so in the eyes of the GOP electorate. For now, however, here are the Republican primary numbers that were released on Thursday:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Gingrich 31, Romney 25, Paul 13, Santorum 13
NATIONAL (NBC/Wall Street Journal): Gingrich 37, Romney 28, Santorum 18, Paul 12
FLORIDA (Insider Advantage): Romney 40, Gingrich 32, Paul 9, Santorum 8
FLORIDA (Rasmussen): Romney 39, Gingrich 31, Santorum 12, Paul 9
FLORIDA (Monmouth/SurveyUSA): Romney 39, Gingrich 32, Santorum 11, Paul 8
On the general election front, there is at least some evidence that Florida is not the GOP lean that a lot of pundits are making it out to be in November, particularly if you dig into the numbers a bit:
NATIONAL (NBC/Wall Street Journal): Obama d. Romney (49-43); Obama d. Santorum (53-38); Obama d. Gingrich (55-37); Obama d. Romney and Ron Paul (45-32-18)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-43); Obama d. Gingrich (48-41)
FLORIDA (Quinnipiac): Obama tied with Romney (45-45); Obama d. Paul (47-39); Obama d. Santorum (49-40); Obama d. Gingrich (50-39)
FLORIDA (Suffolk Univ): Romney d. Obama (47-42); Obama d. Gingrich (49-40)
MINNESOTA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (51-41); Obama d. Santorum (52-40); Obama d. Paul (51-38); Obama d. Gingrich (53-38)
Some thoughts about what might happen in Florida, both next week and in November, after the jump.
The striking thing about the trio of polls released today in advance of next week's Florida primaries is how utterly consistent they are. In all of them, Mitt Romney gets either 39 percent or 40 percent of the vote. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, either checks in at 31 percent or 32 percent. We have not seen a polling day in recent memory where multiple pollsters had such unanimity about the state of the race.
The problem, for those eager to forecast next Tuesday's outcome, is how little consistency there has been over the past few days. Sure, all of today's numbers are in line with one another. But ... hell ... two of these polls are sharp contradictions to data earlier in the week by the same pollsters. Both Rasmussen and Insider Advantage throw out numbers today that stand in direct contrast to results they offered over the past weekend.
This could mean, as we mentioned at the time, that South Carolina really was an ephemeral bounce, and Monday was the high water mark for Newt, never to be seen again. It could also simply mean that Mitt is riding a mini-Florida bounce based on his Monday debate performance. Which, as it happened, means that Newt Gingrich could halt or even reverse that momentum if he managed to land some sharp blows on Romney in tonight's debate.
This primary is really starting to remind me of the San Francisco-New Orleans NFL playoff game from two weeks ago, where the fortune fell on the team lucky enough to have the ball in their possession in the waning minutes of the game.
On the general election front, there is some evidence (yet again) that the electoral fortunes of the president are on a bit of an upswing, as well. Obama is tied with Romney in the Quinnipiac poll in Florida, after trailing Romney in the last two polls out of the Sunshine State.
There is another notable aspect of that Q poll that is a reversal of previous surveys across the board. All year, smart numbers men like Tom Jensen have warned that an Obama-Romney tie might actually be bad news for the president, because the undecided voters skewed conservative and anti-Obama. In this Q poll, however, only 2 percent of Republicans were undecided, compared to 6 percent of Democrats. This might be a sign that while GOP voters have come off the fence, swing voters might have gone from Romney back onto the fence, levelling out the outcome overall.
And even in the Suffolk poll, which showed a five-point Romney edge, the undecided seemed slightly more inclined to support the president over Mitt Romney. Furthermore, 52 percent of those surveyed said they were either "very" or "somewhat" likely to support Obama if the economy improved between now and the election.
In a smirk-worthy data point likely to be ignored by the traditional media because of their long-established love affair with GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, the Suffolk poll actually found that Mitt Romney's prospects for carrying the state got worse when paired with Rubio. The Suffolk poll tested a trial heat with the ticket of Obama-Biden challenged by the ticket of Romney-Rubio. In that configuration, the Romney lead was cut by more than half (46-44). They also decided to play every journalist's favorite parlor game, testing an Obama-Clinton ticket (which, as it has in other polls, polled exceptionally well).