Mirror, mirror on the wall—who's the craziest of them all?
Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 3/22-25. Registered voters. MoE ±3.1% (no trendlines):
Q: Who do you think is the most extreme Republican candidate for President: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, or do you think none of the candidates are extreme?
Rick Santorum: 27
Ron Paul: 25
Newt Gingrich: 15
Mitt Romney: 11
None: 17
Unsure: 4
Only when going up against the likes of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum has Newt Gingrich ever looked so moderate by comparison. But I'm actually most amazed by that "none of the above" figure: Only 17% of voters thing that none of the GOP hopefuls are extreme—and that number is barely different among self-identified Republicans, among whom only 20% say the same thing. But Ds & Rs do rank the candidates differently. Among Dems:
Rick Santorum: 36
Newt Gingrich: 19
Mitt Romney: 13
Ron Paul: 12
None: 15
Unsure: 5
And among the GOP:
Ron Paul: 39
Rick Santorum: 13
Mitt Romney: 13
Newt Gingrich: 11
None: 20
Unsure: 3
These numbers actually make a good deal of sense: For Democrats who have heard a good bit about Rick Santorum these last few months, his particular brand of fundamentalist lunacy is just terrifying. Ron Paul, on the other hand, occasionally says reasonable-sounding stuff about ending our overseas wars (even if his motivations are completely different from a progressive's), so he comes off as least extreme, despite his many lunatic ideas.
But for Republicans, Paul is wildly outside their mainstream on so many issues that he really sticks out. The rest of the pack? All pretty much the same! And that fits as well, because while there are sharp stylistic differences between Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney, there just isn't a lot of daylight between them on the issues.
So why do Santorum and Paul vie for the top spot overall? Because independents both give them "high" marks on the extremism scale—which is sort of interesting, because the CW (and other polling) says that disaffected folks who don't identify with either party are where a good deal of Paul's support comes from, but I guess indies are also a source of hostility as well. (Just shows why it's always dangerous to try to draw too many conclusions about what "independents" want.)
P.S. As always, our approval and favorability numbers can be found on our weekly trends page.