Tex. Gov. Rick Perry has taken the lead nationally, but GOP voters are really starting to catch on with his campaign in key primary states as well. Recently, Perry’s stormed to the front in South Carolina and Iowa in multiple surveys, and a Republican poll out Friday shows him at the top in another early state in the GOP nomination process: Nevada.
A Magellan Strategies poll out Friday showed that Perry is the first choice of 29 percent of Neveada GOP caucus-goers, followed by former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney at 24 percent. The survey shows pretty much a two way race: the rest of the field is in single digits, and former contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is down to fourth with 6 percent, behind businessman Herman Cain’s 7.
Bachmann is tied with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) at 6 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is at 5, followed by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman both at 1.
Romney had held a solid lead in a Public Policy Polling (D) survey of Nevada during early August, when Perry was just about to officially enter the race. But in the following weeks Perry has clearly built up support at the expense of other candidates, like Bachmann. “Looking at responses by voter subgroup, we find male voters and seniors (voters aged 65 or older) leaning heavily towards Rick Perry,” reads the Magellan memo on the Nevada poll. “Among self-identified tea party ‘members,’ which make up 49% of all respondents, Rick Perry has a 20 point lead over Mitt Romney.”
The Magellan poll used 631 autodial surveys with likely Nevada GOP caucus-goers conducted from August 29th to the 31st. The poll has a sampling error of 3.9 percent.
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