Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has surged to the largest national lead held by any candidate so far in the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters finds Gingrich on top with 38% of the vote. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a distant second at 17%. No other candidate reaches double-digits.
The poll has Herman Cain and Ron Paul at eight percent. Rick Perry is at four percent.
If Cain gets out, Rasmussen has Gingrich at 42, Romney at 19, Paul at eight and Perry at 5.
There are polls in Florida that people just can’t believe. Here was Ace Of Spades’ attempt to handle what he saw there…
Unbelievable ARG Poll Has Florida At 19% Romney, 50% Gingrich
Update: Not Nearly As Unbelievable As I Thought — Average of Last Three Polls Has Gingrich at 46%—Ace
Literally unbelievable, I think. ARG has a bad reputation in my mind for shoddy polling.
Suspicious to me is that Ron Paul, who you can generally count on to get 10% in most places, is only at 2%.
Bear in mind that “Doctor” Ron Paul’s fans are so devoted that they buy cookbooks containing recipes from the Paul Family (and friends), like he’s Suzanne Sommers or something.
Clarification: This is the third poll showing Gingrich with a comfortable lead in Florida.
I am not disputing he’s the current front runner — and by a pretty good margin. It’s just this 50% business I’m specifically calling shenanigans on.
Another Clarification: Uh, I thought the other polls had Gingrich at 35% or so.
Nope. The other two have him at 41% and 47% in Florida.
So this 50% figure is not really unbelievable.
I just seem to have not updated my “general sense of things” fast enough to keep up with what seems to be a much stronger bandwagon/sudden embrace effect than we’ve seen before.
Similar situation in Iowa and South Carolina.
Gingrich is about to get a full-on assault now. It’s already begun…
- Jim Geraghty at National Review
- Stuart Schwartz at American Thinker
- Joshua Green at the Boston Globe
- Jeffrey Tobin at Contentions
There are lots more, and there will be lots more.
The race is still fluid. But this is the part where other frontrunners have started to lose altitude. Newt’s hot right now, and his hour-long interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last night was sensational stuff. He’s going to have to do everything he can to fend off those attacks, or else this race really gets chaotic.
Cain is likely to drop out in the next 10 days. Perry will stay in, but his numbers are hideous. Paul has his 8-10 percent, Romney is losing steam but still in the game.
The previous flavors of the month – Bachmann, Perry, Cain – all hit the skids. Newt is a bit more battle-tested than those guys were, and even though he’s likely to get blasted from all sides in the next two weeks you’d figure he might be better suited to withstand it.
But he still doesn’t have a whole lot of money yet. And that’s an issue.
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