With four national polls in the last week showing Texas Gov. Rick Perry ahead of the field in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, it looks more like the contention that former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney was a weak frontrunner has proved true. But as the primary season prepares to kick into high gear, how has Perry moved to the front so quickly? Numbers released on Tuesday from a Public Policy Polling (D) poll of crucial primary state South Carolina tell the story not just of Perry’s new dominance of conservative voters, and Romney’s weakness on the right, but of more concern for him — they show a real vulnerability in the center as well.
The fact that Perry is now dominating in South Carolina, a conservative state, is probably not news to campaign watchers. The PPP survey shows him with 36 percent of the potential vote, followed by Romney with 16 and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) at 13, the second poll in five days to show Perry with a big lead. But the crosstabs show that Romney, the presumed “moderate” candidate (or at least more moderate), cannot even defend his own turf in the middle of the GOP electorate in a conservative state. He faces an implacable right wing of the party, which is fully in Perry’s column, and moderate sect that is willing to support Perry despite his more strident views.
When PPP asked South Carolina GOP voters if they believe in global warming, 25 percent answered they did, and 61 percent said they did not. Those who believe in global warming didn’t shun Perry even though he’s a major climate change skeptic: he was still viewed favorably by that group by a 51 – 25 split. Romney on the other hand got much more push back from those who don’t believe in global warming: a 48 – 38 split, which is more damaging because the skeptics make up a much larger total of the base. In fact, of those 25 percent who believe in global warming, Perry still wins a purality of their votes, 24 percent, with Romney at 22 percent. On the flip side, Perry crushes Romney with the skeptics, earning 42 percent, to Romney’s mere 11, outpaced by Bachmann at 14 and businessman Herman Cain at 12.
The same trend occurs when PPP asked whether respondents believe in evolution: 32 percent said yes, and 57 percent no. But Perry, despite referring to evolution as a “theory that’s out there” and thus calling it into question, is still viewed favorably by 60 percent of those South Carolina GOP voters who do believe in it, and by 69 percent of those who don’t. Romney on the other hand is only viewed favorably by 46 percent of evolution critics, and only bests Perry on favorability by four percent among those who accept it. Consequently, Perry leads the field in both categories, the first choice of 24 percent of those who believe in evolution and 41 percent who don’t.
And when it comes to those voters who like the Tea Party, Perry dominates, one of many examples in the data showing he’s sewing up the conservative vote in the early going. South Carolina GOP voters like the Tea Party at 71 percent clip, against only 13 percent who don’t, so it’s an enormous cross section of voters in the primary. Perry is viewed favorably by those who like the Tea Party (73 – 9) and spilts fairly evenly with those who don’t (42 – 46), thus locking up his base. But Romney actually has higher unfavorable ratings among voters who also see the Tea Party negatively, 40 percent, than he does of those GOP voters who actually like the conservative movement, 33 percent. Perry then builds an insurmountable lead among the large sample of Tea Party supporters, of which he is the first choice of 41 percent, versus Romney’s take of 27 percent of the Tea Party haters. Even among those who aren’t fans of the Tea Party, Perry manages to come in second, with 16 percent.
Of course it is still early days, but where there was once a contention that Mitt Romney wasn’t a frontrunner by choice in the GOP presidential primary, there is now evidence that his position was always on soft ground. His drop in this poll and some similar results in Iowa show not so much that he was the inevitable candidate, but that it was inevitable that someone would come along to truly lock down conservatives and woo moderates at the same time, all of whom are looking for someone to take on President Obama.
