Well ... that was interesting.
After the first contest of the 2012 presidential sweepstakes resulted in a tie, for all intents and purposes, attention now shifts to the northeast, where the New Hampshire primary awaits in six days.
Expect pollsters to go into full New Hampshire mode over the next few days, and expect a raft of national polling to assess the Santor-mentum, as well. But, for now, it is a very light day of data as everyone nurses their Iowa Caucus hangovers. We get two tracking polls on the GOP side today--the Gallup national tracker, and the Suffolk tracker in New Hampshire. We will check the momentum on each side after the jump, but for now, here are the numbers:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 26, Gingrich 23, Paul 13, Santorum 8, Perry 6, Bachmann 5, Huntsman 2
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Suffolk Tracking): Romney 43, Paul 14, Gingrich 9, Huntsman 7, Santorum 6, Bachmann 2, Karger 1, Perry 1, Roemer 1
On the general election front, we (once again) have very little data to munch on. As was the case last week, we are left gnawing on table scraps for Rasmussen, who offers up their once-a-week assessment of key Republicans when paired with Barack Obama:
NATIONAL (Rasmussen): Obama d. Gingrich (49-39); Obama d. Huntsman (46-33)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen): Generic Republican d. Obama (47-43)
Head across the jump for the analysis, including why these particular tracking polls are the clip-and-save ones for the GOP primary.
Before we delve into the GOP primary, a quick word about the general election polling. Rasmussen felt the need to poll Obama-Gingrich again (and got the same ten-point margin we have seen for weeks), but they also dropped an Obama-Huntsman poll on us. Why, I swear to God, I do not know. Huntsman has gone all-in up in the Granite State, and the latest Suffolk tracker has him sinking to 7 percent and clinging to fourth place. To say I don't like his chances would be an understatement.
PPP doesn't have any new polling this week, though they promise new numbers in both New Hampshire and South Carolina by the end of the weekend. That did not stop them from crunching numbers, however. They analyzed their 2011 polling pairing the president and Mitt Romney. Their findings are extraordinarily interesting, and portend a real coin-flip election if Romney can survive and make his way to the Republican nomination.
Speaking of the Republican nomination, let's talk about today's polling of the GOP sweepstakes.
When the teevee pundits and journalists are poring over the data from New Hampshire roughly 140-145 hours from now, remember these two polls. These polls were the last ones taken before the results in Iowa were (ahem) known.
In other words, treat these as a baseline. Rick Santorum, in all probablility, will get a bounce out of Iowa. Whether or not his plausibility as a player for the nomination is legit or not will depend on the size and staying power of said bounce.
Bachmann is out (or ... um ... suspended), and Perry is clinging to a pretty tiny thread. Those votes should go Santorum's way. In New Hampshire, as you can see, that doesn't mean diddly squat. Even if he somehow took all of the support once set aside for Perry and Bachmann, he'd still need to help to climb into double digits. And even in the national numbers, where Perry and Bachmann aren't quite as pathetic, it is still not a game changer. Even if Santorum got 100 percent of the supporters for these two flagging candidacies, he'd still only make it to 19 percent, and he'd still be looking up at both Romney and Gingrich.
Santorum's path to relevance in the GOP race is simple--he's going to need for Gingrich supporters to start to see the writing of the wall. If Gingrich remains in double digits, it is hard to see where Santorum earns the nomination. So, in the coming days, watch Gingrich's share in that Gallup tracking poll. If he begins to drop into the teens, and Santorum creeps up into double digits, Romney still may have a legitimate fight for the GOP nomination. If Gingrich manages to staunch the bleeding, and stays roughly where he is today, that'll give him enough cause to stick around. If that happens, Romney remains the betting favorite, even if he cannot seem to climb out of the twenties.
So, in the coming days, look at Romney v. Santorum in these two tracking polls.
If we use these polls as a baseline, Santorum is 18 percent behind Romney nationally, and a rather intimidating 37 percent behind him in New Hampshire.
In both cases, the "Santorum Surge" is present from last week, but the impact is rather muted. When Gallup released their last poll of 2011 right before New Year's weekend, the national margin was 21 points, with Romney at 26 percent and Santorum at 5 percent. When Suffolk started their daily tracking poll in New Hampshire by going in the field late last week, the margin was 38 points, with Romney at 41 percent and Santorum at 3 percent.
Therefore, the numbers today do not reflect the same meteoric rise that we saw propel Santorum into the deadlock with Romney that we saw in Iowa. But now, Santorum has become the next anti-Romney in the eyes of the press. What he does with that in the polling over the next few days will be extraordinarily interesting to watch.