Virtually all national polls show that pretty much any leading Democrat would wipe the floor with Mitt Romney. So this here poll from the Granite State sounds like Very Good News to me.
More below the flip….
According to a SurveyUSA poll of 551 likely Republican Primary voters, Mitt Romney gathered 32%, followed by Rudy Guiliani at 23% and John McCain with 22%. Fred Thompson finished fourth with 11%.
Romney leads by 9%, a result sure to please Mormons and ecumenical Christian conservatives, and horrify the more traditional anti-Mormon Christian fundamentalists that make up the Republican base. As expected, Rudy and McCain are neck and neck in the somewhat (small-L) libertarian state that went for McCain in 2000, but they are far behind the former Massachusetts governor. Obviously, it appears that downstate Republicans in the Boston media market are sweet on him.
Looking at the crosstabs, we start with what we already know – his lot is cast with the conservative wing of his party – and find a few interesting tidbits: he gets impressive support from union households, people who don’t own guns, and Generation Y.
In a poll of 589 likely Democratic Primary voters, Clinton gets 40%, Obama follows with 24%, while John Edwards trails with 22%.
Not much to report there. The last time Rasmussen polled Clinton vs. Romney nationally, Hillary was up by 9%. Obama led by 15%, and Edwards led by 26%. Heck, even Richardson leads Romney by 8%.
Now, I don’t think Romney has a shot outside of New England and the Mormon Belt (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, maybe Nevada). But if Romney wins New Hampshire, that hopefully will make the GOP primary at least a 3 man race for that much longer. You have to wonder what things will be like in South Carolina – do they go for the “liberal”, the man they spurned in 2000, or the Mormon? Or do they go outside the top 3 and vote for Huckabee, Thompson, or Brownback? Anyone else thinking it depends which one hires the slimiest folks to pull tricks out of the Lee Atwater playbook?
I guess I should welcome myself back to being an SSP diarist after a hiatus of several months. I’ll keep watching those polls, ladies and gents.
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This really shouldn’t be all that surprising, since Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts, the locals in New Hampshire would already know him best (especially considering Giuliani and McCain are likely to split the fairly small independent vote, Romney can work on picking up the conservatives).
One thing did cross my mind though, if Romney does well in NH, and the media is taken by surprise or makes a big deal out of it, it could give Romney the ability to win in the south (I think southern Republicans would rather go with Romney than McCain or Giuliani, despite the fact McCain probably IS the most conservative of the bunch)