Polling, for the moment, seems to be mirroring conventional wisdom as we open up the week leading into the South Carolina primary. Mitt Romney keeps edging out to bigger and bigger leads as the continued infighting over who gets the right to be the "anti-Mitt" continues to weaken the appetite for any of the potential anti-Mitts. Meanwhile, the battle between the president and the now clear-cut Republican frontrunner looks to be very, very close.
There is quite a bit of data to kick off the week, but it is hard to find any of it that doesn't reinforce the two themes we see above.
Let's start with the Republican primary, where Mitt Romney continues to slowly consolidate support with the GOP faithful:
NATIONAL (Fox News): Romney 40, Santorum 15, Gingrich 14, Paul 13, Perry 6, Huntsman 5
NATIONAL (Gallup): Romney 37, Gingrich 14, Santorum 14, Paul 12, Perry 5, Huntsman 2
FLORIDA (American Research Group): Romney 42, Gingrich 25, Santorum 9, Paul 8, Huntsman 5, Perry 3
FLORIDA (PPP): Romney 41, Gingrich 26, Santorum 11, Paul 10, Perry 4, Roemer 1
SOUTH CAROLINA (Insider Advantage): Romney 32, Gingrich 21, Paul 14, Santorum 13, Huntsman 6, Perry 5
SOUTH CAROLINA (New Frontier Strategy): Romney 32, Gingrich 23, Santorum 14, Paul 10, Perry 6, Huntsman 4
SOUTH CAROLINA (We Ask America): Romney 31, Gingrich 18, Paul 12, Santorum 9, Perry 6, Huntsman 5
Meanwhile, when both major national polls released on Monday show a one-point fight for the White House, I suspect it is fair to say that the battle for Barack Obama's re-election is a coin flip.
NATIONAL (CNN/Opinion Research): Romney d. Obama (48-47); Obama d. Paul (48-46); Obama d. Santorum (51-45); Obama d. Gingrich (52-43)
NATIONAL (Fox News): Obama d. Romney (46-45); Obama d. Santorum (50-38); Obama d. Gingrich (51-37); Obama d. Romney w/a Ron Paul 3rd party bid (42-35-14)
Some thoughts about the numbers after the jump.
A critical McNugget of information in all of today's data came from PPP's poll on Florida, and it goes a long way toward explaining the current state of the Republican primary:
It's not just a splintered conservative vote that has him ahead in Florida. And even if most of his opponents were to drop out before the primary, Romney would still be in good shape. In hypothetical head to head match ups he leads Gingrich 50-38, Santorum 59-29, Perry 69-21, and Paul 76-17.
One national poll last week confirmed the same result: we now appear to have reached a phase in this Republican primary campaign where even winnowing the field down to a binary choice may not be enough to dislodge Mitt Romney.
There might be a couple of logical explanations for this. First, the battle to establish a clear anti-Romney led to several weeks of campaigning where the guns of the also-rans were trained on each other, rather than on Mitt Romney. This might explain why Romney's favorability ratings among Republicans have been steady or improving, while those of his rivals have taken a considerable hit.
Another explanation centers around the stubborn insistence on those Republicans who are lukewarm about Romney to coalesce around a single candidate. Just when it looked like Newt Gingrich was within striking distance of changing the game in South Carolina, the party's leading evangelicals gathered in Texas and elected to endorse Rick Santorum. With about three weeks of Gingrich v. Santorum infighting, it is becoming less and less likely that fans of one will embrace the other if/when the inevitable drop-out moment occurs.
And, as Mitt Romney creeps into the 30s (and even 40 percent in Monday's Fox News poll), the need for a unified anti-Mitt candidate has become critical. After all, assume that Mitt gets 35-40 percent of the vote. Ron Paul is going nowhere, and seems to have a narrow ceiling and floor between 12-20 percent of the vote. That doesn't leave a lot of real estate for a single rival, even if they swept the rest of the vote (which is not a lock, especially now).
The bottom line, barring a real upset on Saturday, is that the clock for an anti-Mitt surge is clearly expiring. If there has been a consistent theme in the polls over the past week, it is Mitt Romney creeping up to a vote level which, while underwhelming, will probably be enough to secure the nomination.