Riding Electability & Expectations, Romney Rolls to 35 Percent Support
EmailBolstered by the twin engines of electability and perceived inevitability, Mitt Romney’s on a roll, advancing in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll to a 2-to-1 lead over his closest competitor in support for the Republican presidential nomination.
Coming off his eight-vote victory in Iowa and strong showing in New Hampshire, a vast 72 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now expect Romney to be their nominee — up by 32 points from mid-December. Fifty-seven percent, moreover, call him their best chance to win in November, nearly triple the September level, with a 19-point jump in the last month alone.
Given these advantages, Romney now holds 35 percent support for the nomination, with his closest competitors bunched in the teens — 17 percent for Newt Gingrich, the latest in a string of contenders to see his support collapse; a steady 16 percent for Ron Paul; and 13 percent for Rick Santorum, who is up 10 points since his strong second in Iowa, but still far behind Romney nationally.
Romney’s previous high was 30 percent in ABC/Post polls last month and in July. His support has firmed as well as grown, with 43 percent of his backers saying they’re definitely for him, with no chance they’ll change their minds — up steadily from 28 percent in November.
While that leaves enough flexibility for the race to shift, Romney has gained ground as the consensus candidate. This poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds Romney leading as second choice among leaned Republicans who currently favor others. And just 8 percent say they definitely would not back him for the nomination, putting him last on the list of unacceptable candidates. About a quarter, by contrast, rule out Paul and Gingrich alike.
Among Romney’s other strong cards, four in 10 leaned Republicans say he has the best temperament and personality for the presidency; that falls to the low teens for Gingrich and Santorum and to the single digits for Paul and Rick Perry. Romney also leads in trust to handle four out of five issues tested (he’s numerically behind Gingrich only on “international affairs.”) He’s gained eight points since December in trust to handle the deficit and leads broadly on the economy. Even on handling social issues, Romney leads Gingrich and Santorum, by 10 and 11 points, respectively.
Jon Huntsman’s departure is not a significant factor in Romney’s advance. Huntsman had just 3 percent support in this poll, completed Sunday, a day before he quit the race. Allocating his backers’ second choice gives one point to Romney, one to Gingrich, with the rest scattered.
RISKS — Romney does face some challenges. Compared with electability and temperament, he’s more weakly rated on having the best experience, best representing core Republican values, saying what he believes, being honest and trustworthy, and understanding the problems of “people like you.” He doesn’t clearly trail on any of these, but neither does he clearly lead; and these attribute ratings generally are flat for Romney from last month, while Santorum has gained as many as 9 points, albeit just to the teens.
Romney’s chief vulnerability would be for some of the groups in which he’s struggled — very conservative Republicans, evangelical Christians and strong supporters of the Tea Party movement — to coalesce around an alternative. So far, though, no dice. Consider:
- Romney has 34 percent support among evangelical white Protestants, up from 20 percent in December. He’s now numerically leading (albeit not statistically significantly) in this core Republican group.
- He’s got 29 percent support among very conservative Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, enough for first place, at least numerically, in this group. And he’s up by a broad 18 points among moderates from last month, to 48 percent support.
- Romney gets 28 percent among “very” strong supporters of the Tea Party movement, about even with Gingrich’s 27 percent. The tea party, as an aside, has slipped to its lowest support on record, 40 percent among Americans overall.
Romney’s managing other risks. There’s been a 9-point drop since last month in the number of potential Republican voters who see his record on health care as a major reason to oppose him. And he appears little damaged by charges that he chain-sawed jobs while running the corporate takeover firm Bain Capital. Fifty-one percent of leaned Republicans have a favorable opinion of his business experience (about the same as last month), and by 50-28 percent more think he chiefly created jobs at Bain than cut them.
The jobs issue, though, is not fully resolved. His unfavorable rating on his business experience is up by 9 points, to 29 percent. And a substantial number of leaned Republicans, 23 percent, are unsure whether he chiefly created or cut jobs, which is an issue that matters in his support. Among those who see him as a job creator, Romney wins 50 percent support. That falls to 25 percent among those who aren’t sure about his record on jobs, as well as 18 percent among those who think he’s mainly cut them.
GENERAL — Questions about Romney’s background at Bain Capital may show bigger teeth in a general election campaign. By 55-35 percent, more Americans express concern about the economic system favoring the wealthy than about overregulation fettering free enterprise, an issue that will likely be a sharp point of contention between Barack Obama and whichever Republican he faces.
There are major partisan divisions on the question: Seventy-nine percent of Democrats see unfairness in the economic system as the bigger problem; just 30 percent of Republicans agree — but 52 percent of independents side with the Democrats. So do significantly more young adults, women, racial minorities, less well-off and the least-educated Americans, compared with their counterparts.
Unsurprisingly given these groups, those who see economic unfairness as the bigger problem disproportionately trust Obama over the eventual Republican nominee to address it, 64-28 percent. Those who see overregulation as the greater concern prefer the GOP approach, 74-21 percent. Given the greater concern over economic fairness, there’s potential advantage here for Obama.
As things stand, the potential matchup between Obama and Romney remains very close. Among all adults, 47 percent currently prefer Romney, 46 percent, Obama. By contrast, Obama leads Paul, Santorum and Gingrich by 8-, 13- and 15-point margins, respectively.
THE OPPOSITION — To get to Obama, one of Romney’s opponents first must overcome Romney — and as noted, that’s not getting any easier. While Romney’s strengths are one problem they all face, each also has significant weaknesses of his own. Among them:
- Gingrich, in addition to seeing his support shrink by 13 points from last month, takes a hit for his work as a consultant for companies with an interest in federal policy making. Last month more Republicans and Republican leaning-independents saw this unfavorably than favorably, by 44-33 percent. Now that’s widened to a 51-29 percent negative split.
- Paul, who finished third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, continues to alienate many of his non-supporters. Within his own party, 50 percent of leaned Republicans think that if elected Paul would pursue policies that most people in this country would find unacceptable. On one specific issue, 49 percent call his opposition to U.S. military interventions “a major reason” to oppose his candidacy, twice as many as see it as a major reason to support him.
- Santorum, for his part, draws a 65 percent unfavorable response from potential Republican voters for his position that abortion should be illegal in all cases, including cases of rape, incest or mortal danger to the mother. And by more than 2-1, 31-14 percent, leaned Republicans see his support of earmarks while a U.S. senator as a major reason to oppose his candidacy.
Leaned Republicans’ satisfaction with the candidates, at 61 percent, is not high. But more are learning to like Romney, not least given his perceived electability. Changeability is such that one of his opponents could catch him; overall, 60 percent of potential GOP voters say they still may change their minds. But as Romney pushes on to South Carolina and Florida beyond, his opponents’ time is running short.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Jan. 12-15, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points for the full sample. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y.
Best Commencement Speeches of 2012 
Joe Biden Recalls Death of Wife, Daughter
I guess I’m in the minority as regards to Ron Paul’s position on the military and foreign policy. Those items are his strongest points. I think the figures would change dramatically if we did not have an all volunteer military because, then, everybody would have a stake in our interventionist foreign policy. It’s always easy to rattle the sabers and be super patriotic when you’re not going to be put in harms way. For that reason, the draft should be restored, only this time, no deferments unless you are 4 F.
Posted by: john locke | January 17, 2012, 12:53 am 12:53 am
Romney does not understand the core issues with the economy, and he never will. You cannot continue these wars and balance the budget. It is impossible. So we will continue to run huge money deficits until the financial system collapses. This is the policy of a lunatic.
Ron Paul is the only one:
1) Who WILL fix the economy by changing the currency to one backed by metals
2) Who WILL eliminate the un-necessary and aggressive overseas wars that never end.
3) Who WILL eliminate the Income Tax, entirely.
4) Who WILL Balance the budget – and he’s you how. Romney has not.
Posted by: Jack Lee | January 17, 2012, 3:35 am 3:35 am
Romney stays firm on the most important issues? Really? He flip flops so much that he doesn’t even know which side he’s on. The problem here is you’d rather believe in a liar who sugar coats everything rather than a guy who is telling you the cold hard truth.
Wisdom would be to not vote for a corrupt liar named Romney who will be no better than Obama.
Posted by: Wisdom | January 17, 2012, 5:00 am 5:00 am
ABO (and Harry Reid).
Posted by: newcountryman | January 17, 2012, 5:14 am 5:14 am
Jack Lee wrote: Ron Paul is the only one:
1) Who WILL fix the economy by changing the currency to one backed by metals
2) Who WILL eliminate the un-necessary and aggressive overseas wars that never end.
3) Who WILL eliminate the Income Tax, entirely.
4) Who WILL Balance the budget – and he’s you how. Romney has not.
Jack, HOW will Paul get Congress to pass ANY of this foolishness? He can’t even get a GOP co-sponsor on his bills NOW? The government needs about 15% of the money it takes in just to pay the interest on its debts. It needs money to keep a standing military and satellites. It needs money to pay the people who have paid into Social Security, whose Trust Fund has $2.5 TRILLION in government IOUs. How do you end Income Tax and pay those requirements and liabilities alone? And the Gold Standard crippled the economy in late 1800′s let alone now – THINK about it: if you restrict the money float to the value of government held precious metals, only the very wealthy or Fortune 500 businesses would easily get loans. No more mortgages, auto loans, student loans, etc. THINK!
Posted by: The_Mick | January 17, 2012, 5:29 am 5:29 am
Santorum suffers from distinguishing the difference between freedom and the imposition of his religious beliefs on the general public via his political position. In short, he seems unable, or unwilling, to understand separation of church and state. As such, he is not qualified to hold the office of President of the United States.
Posted by: john locke | January 17, 2012, 5:47 am 5:47 am
ABC only shows Mitt Witt’s comments and pictures when the only real candidate for serious change is RON PAUL! ABC and all the media want to sell you a pack of lies, the vote has always been rigged BUSH showed us that and we now that the Federal Reserve has to GO! Ron Paul speaks the truth where these others are just more puppets!
Posted by: frank | January 17, 2012, 5:49 am 5:49 am
Jack Lee | January 17, 2012, 3:35 am 3:35 am… “changing the currency to one backed by metals”… Really!! This may be difficult to comprehend and/or even understand but heavily reported in Europe by the BBC, the last thing the United States and Great Britain want is their currency backed by gold. The US doesn’t have the capital “gold” to cover the value of our currency…
Posted by: mticervin | January 17, 2012, 7:02 am 7:02 am
Republicans must be enamored with president Obama, Mitt Romney is just like him, a liberal politician who will say what ever is necessary to get elected. What is surprising is both parties failure to realize the situation when it comes to our debt. During the next term (Dem or GOP) we are likely to default on our debt. The only way to prevent it is to continue printing money and pay the interest with printed money increasing inflation thereby increasing the payment owed for the next interest installment. I have never been a Ron Paul supporter because he has been there forever and is partially responsible for the situation we are in, however, he at least sees the pending problem and claims he would address it.
Posted by: karek40 | January 17, 2012, 7:33 am 7:33 am
The_Mick – You are right, we need taxes right now if you want entitlements and you want to pay back the looted social security fund and you want to police the world, a completely failed foreign policy that costs us trillions of dollars thousands of lives and the hate of much of the worlds population. You wonder about how Paul will do it when in fact, you KNOW the status quo is already a failure.
At the very least Ron Paul will cut militarism and spending.
He is the only one who will make SS, Medicaid, Medicare viable by cutting spending else where.
It is a lofty goal to get to zero percent tax, but you have to shoot for ideals.
ANYONE ELSE
Posted by: LenGrady75 | January 17, 2012, 7:43 am 7:43 am
Mitt is running away with this thing like a Tom and Jerry cartoon show. Soon, he will hit the wall and come crashing down. Winning in the primaries does not mean winning the general election.
Posted by: NoFlyZone2 | January 17, 2012, 8:51 am 8:51 am
Don’t Believe Everything You read! The media is not going to select who the candidate is going to be…..We are!!!
Posted by: DIRCE | January 17, 2012, 9:26 am 9:26 am
Ron Paul, a patriot, who has honorably served his country, defends both the constitution and civil liberties, and is for peace and prosperity. Dr. Paul has the wisdom, foresight, honesty and integrity to be president.
Dr. Paul believes spending and deficits are destroying this country. Dr. Paul’s budget plan would save $1 trillion in the first year. Besides the spending cuts, there are other issues of importance to voters. For conservatives, Dr. Paul scores an A+ on all of them: Second Amendment protection, pro-life record, right-to-work, pro-business, anti-tax, states’ rights, you name it.
Dr. Paul also believes America should have the strongest national defense on earth — which he believes begins with not trying to constantly police the earth. Right now, our government puts our best and bravest in harm’s way on a regular basis for questionable reasons and with no discernible notion of victory. This is not supporting the troops. It’s abusing them. Dr. Paul wants an end to this absurd, costly policy.
The voters have declared Dr. Paul the alternative to the liberal, flip flopping Mitt Romney. The other candidates are simply irrelevant. In the New Hampshire Primary, Dr. Paul received more votes than all the supposed Anti-Romney (Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry) candidates combined.
The question for Republican voters is not whether they can afford to vote for Dr. Paul – it’s whether they can afford not to.
America Needs Ron Paul.
Posted by: womanforpaul | January 17, 2012, 9:53 am 9:53 am
Looking good for a second Obama term; I’ll keep repeating this: Nominate Ron Paul, or I’m throwing my support behind Obama. If you think I’m fringe, I think you’re mistaken. Ron Paul 2012.
Posted by: Aaron Ververs | January 17, 2012, 9:58 am 9:58 am
Way to go Mitt! Now only 2/3rds of your Party wants anybody but you.
Posted by: A Cynic | January 17, 2012, 10:40 am 10:40 am
Congressman Dr. Ron Paul will beat Barry come November.
Posted by: James Lister | January 17, 2012, 1:46 pm 1:46 pm
1. Secretary General of the Republican Party, George Herbert Walker Bush, recommends Willard Mitt Romney to be nominee of the Party.
2. Central Committee of the Republican Party (composed of Bush family, their operatives, representatives of large banks, private equity companies, hedge funds, and the Chinese Central Bank) selects Mitt Romney as the party nominee
3. Louise Santorum wins Iowa caucus, but some
county chairwoman “finds” missing votes for Mitt Romney, and state-corporate media reports Mitt Romney winner by eight votes, and proclaims him prohibitive favorite to win nomination.
4. Perry stays in after Iowa to help Romney
5. Romney wins 39 percent of popular vote in one of his home states, calls go out to shut down race as Romney is apparent presumptive winner of national race.
6. Association of Republican Elmer Gantries endorses Louise
Santorum in order to keep the hick vote split up for Mitt.
7. Huntsman drops out before South Carolina vote and endorses
Romney
8. Ranger Rick Perry drops out after South Carolina and prays for a heaping helping of federal largess for Texas if Romney manages to buy White House.
9. Thelma Gingrich and Louise Santorum go over cliff
together holding hands in the air after Florida
10. Romney does what no other candidate has ever done: win every single primary and caucus held.
It’s call democracy, Wall $treet Willard style.
MUTTS FOR MITT!
Jump on the station wagon, & join the “Poop on America 2012″ campaign today!
Posted by: A. Hick | January 17, 2012, 3:43 pm 3:43 pm
GO MITT GO!!!
Never mind what the far right-wing tea baggers think. Sensible Republicans know full well that you’re our best shot at winning the White House back in the fall.
Posted by: Danram | January 17, 2012, 3:57 pm 3:57 pm
When all of the voting public discover just How Mitt Romney made his money and how many working people LOST THEIR JOBS because OF the buyouts and shut down plants resulted from his deals, he will no longer be viewed, we think, as a working man’s man! It’s something he and his voting public share, a distinct unknown about themselves, The Voting Public. Rotsa Ruck, (not really) Romney.
All Of Us Just Watched Wall Street Get Bailed Out By Our Trillions of Dollars. We watched them recklessly gamble. We watched them break the law, repeatedly. We watched them, now, being hauled into court by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling toxic, fraudulent securities. The results of which brought our economy and other world economies to its knees.
This fact is a message we can send to clear up any misconceptions citizens may have. This is a clear message of just how we passed though the last decade after then President Clinton signed the Graham, Leach-Bliley Act essentially repealing Financial Regulation and thus over the last 9 years repeating many facets of the Great Depression and creating our country’s current financial woes.
Currently, people running for President like Mitt Romney call this the Free Market. For all practical purposes we may want to continue to point out this is an INACCURACY.
A LOT OF POLITICIANS DON’T UNDERSTAND THE COUNTRY THEY’RE RUNNING TO REPRESENT.
People don’t resent pure wealth, it’s the absence of money in people’s minds that counts. They don’t resent the fact that someone’s rich, they don’t resent the fact that someone has gotten rich. They just want fairness at the end of the day! Americans don’t associate the Wall Street crowd with business in that healthy sense.
Lately, Rick Perry came up with a snappy catch phrase, “Flesh-Eating Vultures” about the Romney Crowd.
This Mr. Romney is not a Howard Schultz, a self-made man-entrepaneur, who grew up in the New York City Housing Projects and built the Starbuck’s business world resulting in jobs, but the Nick Romney one of Financial Games resulting in people being laid off by such financial games.
Too many people know what has happened when such companies takeover their companies, their jobs go away. The Benefits of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital where Romney, made his millions, is best summed up by the New York Times.
“But neither was Romney the Henry Ford-Esque creator he’s tried to play on the campaign trail, he served his investors, not his employees, and his goal was always to make an uncompetitive company competitive, even if that required cutting paychecks and shuttering plants along the way.
Whats more, the Bain company usually found a way to reap profits even when the overhaul failed and the company went belly-up… keeping America’s edge came at a cost. Our economy became more efficient, but also more ruthless and Darwinian. Our G.D.P kept rising, but the new wealth was less evenly distributed. The revolution delivered growth, but at the expense of stability and certainty. And for many Americans, even the “Modest net impact” of private equity buyouts cost them a solid, good-paying job.” Ross Douthat Sunday, January 15 2012
Posted by: CJ LeBlanc | January 17, 2012, 5:28 pm 5:28 pm
RON PAUL IS THE ONLY ONE WHO IS REAL
Posted by: Cassidy | January 17, 2012, 8:19 pm 8:19 pm