After a small post-South Carolina surge, Newt Gingrich's standing in the polls has steadily eroded, as this chart from FiveThirtyEight shows:
The newest batch of polling all agrees on one broad point: Mitt Romney still leads. But by how much—and whether Newt still has any mojo left—there is no consensus.
Quinnipiac:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has a 43 - 29 percent lead over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich among Republican likely voters in Florida, the nation's first big-state presidential primary, according to Quinnipiac University poll released today. Only 7 percent are undecided, but 24 percent say they might change their mind by tomorrow's election
Public Policy Polling:
PPP's second day of tracking in Florida finds little change in the state of the race. Mitt Romney leads with 39% to 32% for Newt Gingrich with Rick Santorum at 14% and Ron Paul at 11%. Romney and Santorum are both down a single point from Saturday's polling while Paul has gained 2 points and Gingrich has stayed in place.
And lastly, InsiderAdvantage:
A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted Sunday night of likely Republican voters in the state of Florida shows a significant surge for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The poll has former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading with 36 percent of voters, followed by Gingrich at 31 percent.
If you're holding out hope that the InsiderAdvantage survey shows Gingrich could somehow, improbably, pull this thing off, just remember that the firm's CEO, Matt Towery, is a former Gingrich campaign chairman. And also note the site I regrettably had to link in order to show you this poll: NewsMax (shudder).
And even if you think Newt could still catch fire in the last 24 hours or so, there's also this to consider: Romney has now locked in a sizable lead among those who say they've already voted. Indeed, PPP's Tom Jensen points out that Gingrich would have to lead by about 6-7 points among those who vote on election day itself in order to pull out a win.
Newt, at least, is vowing to fight on no matter what happens. So we can only hope that for once, he's actually telling the truth. We'll see.