Another day brings another smattering of polls. And though the names of the states and the names of the pollsters may be different, the two themes that have dominated most of February continue to be relevant.
Mitt Romney is still horribly underwhelming in the role of the "GOP frontrunner." Indeed, new polling today confirms that it may not be right to label him as such.
Barack Obama continues to build a lead over the GOP field, and that lead seems to be coming from a rapid abandonment of the Republican hopefuls by Independent voters, especially as it relates to the aforementioned Mr. Romney.
Here are the numbers for Tuesday, starting with the GOP primary:
NATIONAL (CBS/New York Times): Santorum 30, Romney 27, Paul 12, Gingrich 10
NATIONAL (CNN/Opinion Research): Santorum 34, Romney 32, Paul 16, Gingrich 15
NATIONAL (Fairleigh Dickinson): Romney 33, Santorum 33, Gingrich 15, Paul 7
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 32, Santorum 30, Gingrich 16, Paul 8
MICHIGAN (Rasmussen): Santorum 35, Romney 32, Paul 13, Gingrich 11
Multiple national polls are the highlight of today's general election numbers, and they all paint a pretty favorable picture for the Democrats, as has been the case for the last couple of weeks:
NATIONAL (CBS/New York Times): Obama d. Romney (48-42); Obama d. Santorum (49-41); Obama d. Paul (50-39); Obama d. Gingrich (54-36)
NATIONAL (Fairleigh Dickinson): Obama d. Romney (45-41); Obama d. Paul (46-39); Obama d. Santorum (48-39); Obama d. Gingrich (51-36)
NATIONAL (PPP): Obama d. Santorum (49-44); Obama d. Romney (49-42); Obama d. Paul (49-41); Obama d. Gingrich (52-40)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (49-42); Obama d. Santorum (49-41)
MASSACHUSETTS (WBUR): Obama d. Romney (55-34); Obama d. Gingrich (66-19)
It is worth noting that there has been one gradual shift in polling over the last few weeks, and it could be an important one. Head past the jump for that potentially meaningful data point.
When Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich (and ... well ... all of the others) began to ascend the GOP ladder, the one ace that Mitt Romney kept in the hole was the ever-present claim of "electability". Team Romney argued, and the polls generally confirmed, that only Romney and Romney alone could defeat Barack Obama in the general election.
This left, for months, core Republicans with a perplexing dilemma. Do they go with their heart (i.e. a candidate that consistently shared their values) or their head (i.e. Romney, who polls showed was the only guy with a snowballs chance in Hell of winning)?
Romney's recent fade vis-a-vis Barack Obama has damned near rendered that argument extinct. If you look at today's four national polls, and the general election numbers therein, Rick Santorum only does 1.5 percent worse on average than does Mitt Romney. Romney trails by an average of 6 percent, and Santorum is behind by an average of 7.5 percent.
Thus, if those numbers hold for a couple of weeks, Romney's argument that he is uniquely suited to defeat Barack Obama flies right out the window. After all, if both he and Santorum become modest underdogs, a lot of conservatives will prefer to go into battle with the guy they believe in. The strategic case for Mitt Romney gets weaker, especially when one goes inside the numbers a bit and sees how quickly Romney's favorables have eroded over the past month.
Primaries can often be beneficial to a candidate. It allows them to perfect their campaign spiel, and it gets any unsavory information about a candidate out of the way early. But, at times, primaries can be disastrous for a party, especially if it exposes their "electable frontrunner" or their "presumed nominee" as a candidate with a glass jaw.
Therefore, it is little surprise that a strong majority of Republicans (57 percent) think a protracted presidential primary will hurt the eventual nominee.
The bad news for them? It is getting harder and harder to see how this thing is going to resolve itself quickly.