Mitt Romney’s latest problems in South Carolina may have just gone national.
As TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro reported from the ground in Charleston on Thursday night, the former Massachusetts Governor didn’t exactly stop former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s momentum. In fact, he stumbled in some of his answers as Gingrich soared. Newt had reason to be confident — he’s rocketed to the top of the polls in South Carolina, creating a national narrative on his resurgence.
Now it seems that narrative has spilled into national polling results. Gallup’s tracking poll of the national Republican race released today shows that Romney has dropped seven points in six days, with Gingrich having risen seven over the same time, clipping Romney’s lead to ten, 30 – 20.
Gallup’s Editor-in-chief Frank Newport appeared on MSNBC to discuss the results, describing the Romney trends as a “collapse.” “We have seen more movement, more roller coaster kind of effect this year than any other Republican primary in our history of tracking,” Newport said. “I think anything is possible. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility if Romney recovers. We’ll wait and see.”
Here’s the video:
The issue at hand is two-fold. One, this is another example of Romney’s numbers being rather soft. Romney was up big in South Carolina as he successfully fought off Gingrich’s attacks on his tenure as CEO of Bain Capital, which ended up causing Newt to get jammed on whether he was deviating from conservative principles on free enterprise. But all it took was a great performance by Gingrich in Monday night’s debate to catapult him over Romney in a few days — multiple polls showed the before and after effect of the debate in the South Carolina numbers.
Secondly, these developments may cause Romney to lose South Carolina. The next primary state is Florida. It’s a state with multiple large media markets and is extremely expensive to campaign in. And through the campaign so far, Romney has been the best fundraiser — his haul in the last quarter was $19 million. Additionally, Gingrich already had a surge once. And Romney knocked him out in Iowa with negative ads. So the evidence points to that being possible again.
Our TPM Poll Average shows the same trend as Gallup: Romney’s lead is deteriorating nationally as Gingrich rises in South Carolina. As of now, the numbers make it look like if Republicans want the process to continue, it certainly can — Romney still doesn’t have the support within GOP voting blocs to lock things down completely.
National GOP race:
South Carolina GOP race:
