Thursday marked one of the quietest polling days in recent memory, with only a couple of states chiming in (New Jersey and Wisconsin, plus the utterly unimportant GOP primary in Virginia), two national GOP primary polls and the Rasmussen daily tracker of the general election.
While Rasmussen's general election numbers are pretty well in line with where they have been all month, the primary election numbers are dramatically different. More on that after the jump. But first, the numbers:
GOP PRIMARY:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 35, Santorum 24, Gingrich 15, Paul 11
NATIONAL (Rasmussen): Romney 40, Santorum 24, Gingrich 16, Paul 12
NATIONAL (YouGov): Romney 29, Santorum 28, Gingrich 19, Paul 12
VIRGINIA (Roanoke College): Romney 56, Paul 21 (Santorum and Gingrich: Failed to Qualify)
WISCONSIN (PPP): Santorum 43, Romney 27, Gingrich 10, Paul 8
GENERAL ELECTION:
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-43); Obama d. Santorum (46-42)
NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Paul (48-39); Obama d. Romney (49-40); Obama d. Santorum (50-41); Obama d. Gingrich (52-38)
NEW JERSEY (SurveyUSA): Obama d. Romney (52-38); Obama d. Santorum (57-33); Obama d. Paul (56-31); Obama d. Gingrich (61-27)
WISCONSIN (PPP): Obama d. Santorum (49-43); Obama d. Romney (53-39); Obama d. Paul (53-37); Obama d. Gingrich (55-37)
A few thoughts about the state of play in the race for the White House, if you follow me past the jump.
Perhaps the most interesting little McNugget from the House of Ras today is that Rick Santorum would now, according to the Rassies, trail Mitt Romney even in a heads up contest. What's more, the 12 point margin in the two-way tabulation (Romney 50, Santorum 38) is nearly identical to the 14 point margin in the four-way tabulation (Romney 40, Santorum 26).
For some perspective on why that matters: when Rasmussen polled the primary nationally two weeks ago, there was a fairly substantial difference between the two-way and four-way tabulations. When the House of Ras kept all four Republicans in the pool, the Santorum lead over Romney was 12 percent (Santorum 39, Romney 27). But, when the race was whittled down to a simple Santorum-Romney heads-up battle, the margin blew up to 21 percent (Santorum 55, Romney 34).
To put it another way, two weeks ago, Santorum was nabbing roughly 70 percent of the vote when Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul were factored out of the race. Today, Santorum still claims more "defectors" than Romney, but that ratio has been greatly reduced: now he gets just 58 percent of those voters.
Could this be the beginning of the end? Meh … with this bunch, who the hell knows? If Rick Santorum claims Washington state's caucuses this weekend, and then snags more than his fair share of Super Tuesday states, will Republicans believe again in the power of the Anti-Mitt? Or have they finally resigned themselves to the fact that Mitt Romney is their guy? While I have been burned enough to refrain from predicting the outcome of this crazy primary, I will hazard an educated guess: we will have a much better idea of where things stand by this time next week.