It's funny how a double-digit win in your quasi-home state makes you politically bulletproof. Yet that is the fortunate status of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has parlayed two early state wins with less than 40 percent of the vote into the Republican nomination, if you buy the rhetoric flying out of the mouth of a whole lot of the pundit class.
Two polls out of South Carolina over the past two days, however, hint that there might be an iceberg still out there for Mittens, in the form of the Palmetto State. All it is going to take is a fairly small amount of shifting from one of the surviving anti-Mitts to the other. Meanwhile, Mitt looks better nationally than he has is quite some time.
To that end, here are the Republican primary numbers, with two new national polls and new data from down South:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 34, Santorum 15, Gingrich 14, Paul 13, Perry 5, Huntsman 2
NATIONAL (YouGov/Economist): Romney 26, Santorum 19, Gingrich 15, Paul 15, Huntsman 6, Perry 6
FLORIDA (Rasmussen): Romney 41, Gingrich 19, Santorum 15, Paul 9, Huntsman 5, Perry 2
SOUTH CAROLINA (Insider Advantage): Romney 23, Gingrich 21, Santorum 14, Paul 13, Huntsman 7, Perry 5
SOUTH CAROLINA (We Ask America): Romney 26, Gingrich 21, Santorum 13, Paul 8, Perry 5, Huntsman 4
Along with the GOP primary data, we also have a dollop of general election polling, courtesy of the weekly edition of the internet-based YouGov/Economist poll.
NATIONAL (YouGov/Economist): Obama d. Romney (45-43); Obama d. Paul (44-41); Obama d. Santorum (48-41)
Follow past the jump for a bit of analysis as to why Romney is probably, but not necessarily safe at the top of the GOP pyramid.
Don't misunderstand me--it is still exceedingly likely that Mitt Romney will be the nominee of the Republican Party. Prominent Republicans are slowly moving from the bargaining stage with Mitt Romney to the acceptance stage (see some statistical evidence for that at this link from Gallup). In the Gallup daily tracker, Romney has moved out to a lead of nearly 20 percent, which is by far the biggest lead he has seen to this date.
There is a bit of inevitability creeping into the minds of not just the pundit class, but also the minds of the rank-and-file voter. Wednesday's poll release by the crew at We Ask America (reprinted today because of a typographical error in last night's Wrap) underscores this point: even while Mitt Romney currently gets just 26 percent support in their sample, nearly half of the Palmetto State voters in their survey think that Romney will eventually be their guy.
However, it is those polls in South Carolina (both We Ask America's poll and the new one from Insider Advantage) that makes me wonder if Romney might not be due to stub his toe in the South next weekend. The margins are tiny, and Romney sits at roughly a quarter of the vote in both of them.
But more troubling for Team Romney might be what our polling partners at PPP hinted about their own tracking poll in South Carolina via Twitter last night:
Biggest news from South Carolina night 1 is that Newt has moved way ahead of Santorum for 2nd...looks like Mitt v. Newt in SC
An earlier tweet from Tom Jensen hinted that the Romney-Gingrich battle in South Carolina is reasonably competitive. But the nightmare scenario for Romney is any consolidation of his opposition. Romney's inevitable stroll to the nomination is contingent, in no small part, on both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum being close enough to one another to prevent any real consolidation of the anti-Mitt vote behind one candidate. If Santorum's fade winds up being a legitimate phenomenon, Newt Gingrich could theoretically be resurrected enough to win South Carolina.
Will that be enough to recharge a campaign that seemed completely dormant? I'm still beyond skeptical of that, but if Mitt Romney is going to be denied the Republican nomination, that's how it going to have to happen. And the idea of Gingrich getting to soften Mitt Romney up for a couple more months would have to be somewhat attractive to the president and his supporters.