Newt Gingrich offers free history lessons during last Saturday's debate on ABC
Hart/McInturff for NBC/WSJ (PDF). 12/7-1. Republican primary voters. ±4.9%. (11/2-5 results)
Gingrich: 40 (13)
Romney: 23 (28)
Paul: 9 (10)
Bachmann: 8 (4)
Perry: 6 (10)
Huntsman: 5 (-)
Santorum: 3 (2)
Outside of Newt Gingrich, only Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman showed any kind of positive movement since the last NBC/WSJ poll. But screw the trend, Newt just blows everybody away in this poll. And at this point, we're going to start measuring the trend in days and weeks, not months.
The silver lining for Mitt Romney is that he's the top second-choice pick among Republicans, but given how far behind Gingrich he is, he's got a lot of work to do before he can take much advantage of that. The other piece of good news for Romney is that in general election matchups, he trailed Obama by just two points compared to 11 for Gingrich. I find such an enormous spread to be suspicious, but even if it isn't actually representative of reality, it's a useful talking point for Romney.
In a two-person race between Romney and Gingrich, Gingrich wins 59 percent to Romney's 36 percent, the largest head-to-head hypothetical margin that I can recall. His strength comes from his edge with Republicans, conservatives, and tea party supporters.
Gingrich enjoys strong numbers among Republicans (46 percent positive vs. 21 percent negative), conservatives (42 percent positive vs. 23 percent negative) and Tea Party supporters (54 percent positive vs. 16 percent negative). In fact, they are higher than Romney’s numbers among these same three key Republican groups.
Why does he have that edge?
What’s helping Gingrich and hurting Romney? Look no further than ideology.
Fifty-seven percent of Republican primary voters view Gingrich as a conservative, 28 percent see him as a moderate and 10 percent believe he’s liberal.
By comparison, 53 percent of them view Romney as a moderate, 29 percent see him as a conservative and 11 percent believe he’s a liberal.
“Romney’s problem has always been ideology,” Hart says.
And given that Mitt Romney called himself "progressive" on the campaign trail in 2002, it's easy to understand why it's a problem—for Republicans.