Republicans
are most likely to name Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as their first
choice for their party’s 2012 presidential nomination, with Herman Cain
close behind. Among all Republicans nationwide, Romney is the choice of
20% and Gingrich 19%. Among Republican registered voters, Gingrich is at
22% and Romney at 21%.
These results are based on a
USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,062
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents conducted Nov. 13-17.
Compared with the prior poll, conducted Nov. 3-6, Gingrich’s support has
increased from 12% to 19% among all Republicans. His support has gone
up in each of the last three polls after bottoming out at 4% in August,
and is now at his highest for the campaign to date.
Meanwhile, Cain, who has been dogged by allegations of sexual
harassment, has seen his support dip slightly, from 21% to 16%. However,
it remains well above the levels from earlier this year, which were
generally in the single digits.
Rick Perry’s support also slipped, to 8% in the latest poll,
conducted after the two most recent candidate debates, including the
Nov. 9 debate in which Perry failed to remember the names of all three
cabinet departments he vowed to shut down if elected. Perry’s support
has declined in each of the last three updates after peaking at 29% in
mid-August, shortly after he entered the race.
Romney, meanwhile, has been the leader or tied for the lead in nearly
every poll conducted since May, when the Republican field largely came
into shape.
Most of the candidates, including Romney, receive roughly equal
support from conservative and moderate or liberal Republicans. Cain and,
in particular, Gingrich, have greater appeal to conservative
Republicans.
Overall, Gingrich has a slight edge over Romney and Cain among
conservatives, while Romney has a wider margin over the others among
moderates and liberals.
Conservatives outnumber moderates and liberals by better than 2-to-1 in the Republican rank-and-file.
Gingrich and Cain appear to have benefited most from the decline in
Perry’s support. In Gallup’s August update, when Perry was the overall
leader, 33% of conservative Republicans favored him, making him the
clear leader in that subgroup. At that time, 16% of conservative
Republicans supported Romney, 5% Cain, and 4% Gingrich.
Older Republicans Lean Heavily to Gingrich, Romney
Republican presidential nominee preferences vary significantly by
age. If the nomination were contested solely among senior citizens, it
would be a two-man race between Gingrich (34%) and Romney (28%), with 6
in 10 Republicans aged 65 or older supporting one of those two
candidates, and no other candidate above 8% in that age group.
In fact, Gingrich’s support is heavily concentrated among Republicans
who are at least 50, while his support is 4% among Republicans younger
than 30. This pattern may reflect the fact that he has been out of
public office for more than a decade, and thus a less familiar figure to
younger Republicans.
Cain and Ron Paul do much better among younger than among older
Republicans, a consistent finding for Paul throughout the campaign. And
while Romney is competitive with the leaders in every age group, his
support tends to be greater among older Republicans.
Older Americans in general are more likely to vote in elections than
younger Americans, suggesting that Gingrich’s and Romney’s greater
support among older Republicans may translate better to actual voting
than Cain’s and Paul’s among younger Republicans.
Implications
With the first official nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, now
just six weeks away, there is no clear national front-runner for the
Republican nomination. Romney remains at the top of the list, along with
Gingrich, whose campaign has mounted a comeback in recent weeks, and
Cain. Gingrich’s rise coincides with the recent declines of Perry and,
to a lesser extent, Cain,
Typically, well before the Iowa caucuses,
Republicans have anointed a dominant front-runner who
wound up being the nominee. The major exception was in the last
campaign, when Rudy Giuliani led national polls by a healthy margin for
much of 2007 but was largely uncompetitive in the 2008 primaries and
caucuses.
Thus, the current contest stands to be the most competitive and
perhaps most unpredictable for the Republican nomination since 1972,
when the parties shifted the power to choose their presidential nominees
away from party leaders at the national convention to the rank-and-file
voters in state primaries and caucuses.
Posted by Peter Schorsch
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