Cold Pizza: Cain Falls Back In Four Early Primary States, Romney Ahead

Mitt Romney and Herman Cain
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Herman Cain’s moment as GOP frontrunner may be over.

CNN released four polls of the first primary and caucus states on Wednesday: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney has a lead in all of them.

New Hampshire, which has always been in the Romney column, remains so: two in five Republicans in that state plan to vote for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. Romney has a commanding lead in Florida too — he’s up by 12 points on Cain. But when it comes to first in the nation Iowa, Romney only has a three percent lead, and a smaller two point one in South Carolina — both of those within the margin of error.

A near majority of those polled in Iowa and New Hampshire said they could still change their minds. That percentage increases in the third (South Carolina) and fourth (Florida) primary states, reinforcing what the polling on the race has shown for months: it’s still a truly wide open contest, with a still weak frontrunner in Romney.

And while Romney may lead in CNN’s polling, their analysis still pointed to the Tea Party vote as the key subgroup. From CNN.com:

“In all four states, Cain does best among tea party movement supporters. In Iowa, for example, Cain beats Romney among tea party supporters by a 29% to 17% margin, but Romney wins among Republicans who are neutral toward the tea party or oppose it by 14 points,” adds [CNN Polling Director Keating] Holland. “Even in New Hampshire, where Romney wins handily among both groups, Cain’s share of the vote is four times higher among tea party supporters.”

Here are the TPM Poll Averages of the first two states in the GOP primary process.

Iowa

New Hampshire

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