Several new polls suggest that Republican support for Newt
Gingrich in Iowa is declining. Public
Policy Polling says Ron Paul has cut Newt’s lead to just one point 22% to 21%
with Romney at 16% and Bachmann at 11%.
Gingrich’s favorability rating has declined 19 points in just one week
according to the poll while Paul’s favorability rating has grown. Could it be the more Republicans actually learn
about Newt, the less they like him?
American Research Group has found
a similar slippage of Gingrich support in New Hampshire.
Newt also seems to do much worse against Obama than
Romney. An NBC Wall Street Journal poll
just out indicates that Obama would beat Gingrich 51% to 40% but barely beat
Romney (47% Obama to 45% Romney).
MSNBC attributed Newt’s favorability ratings as contributing
to both his lead among Republicans and his problem in a head-to-head general
election contest with Obama.
Gingrich enjoys strong
numbers among Republicans (46 percent positive vs. 21 percent negative),
conservatives (42 percent positive vs. 23 percent negative) and Tea Party
supporters (54 percent positive vs. 16 percent negative). In fact, they are
higher than Romney’s numbers among these same three key Republican groups.”
But that’s as far as
the Gingrich appeal goes, according to the data. “Gingrich struggles with other
important voting blocs — like women (20 percent positive vs. 38 percent
negative), independents (16 percent positive vs. 40 percent negative) and
suburban residents (25 percent positive vs. 41 percent negative),” MSNBC
continued. “By comparison, Romney fares better among women (22 percent positive
vs. 31 percent negative), independents (21 percent positive vs. 29 percent
negative) and suburban dwellers (29 percent positive vs. 30 percent negative).”
In all these cases
Romney has a much larger set of “neutral” respondents than Gingrich, meaning
his job would be to sway their feelings from apathetic to positive rather than
from negative to positive.
Most analysts have expected Newt's candidacy to go into a nosedive due to some major gaff. Could it be that his decline will happen--indeed is beginning to happen--not for any specific thing he has said or done but the for the very simple reason that Newt is Newt and people just had to be reminded once again why he was one of the least admired politicians in the country back in the late 1990s?
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