Two new national polls out on Monday morning show that former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has been regaining support after dropping off after the February 28th win in the Michigan and Arizona primaries. Following a mixed showing on Super Tuesday, Santorum leads Romney by four in a new CBS News national poll, 34 – 30, and is down 33 – 29 to Romney in a new ABC News/Washington Post survey. In either case, that’s a marked inprovement from Gallup’s national tracking poll of the race, which has shown a double digit lead for the former governor over the last few weeks.
“The overall dynamics of the Republican nomination battle have changed little in the last month: voters who identify themselves as conservatives remain solidly behind Santorum while Romney receives more support from moderate Republican primary voters,” CBS wrote in its analysis. “Santorum also leads among supporters of the grassroots tea party movement by a wide margin. Gingrich and Romney are tied for second place among tea party members, each with about half as much support as Santorum.”
But the conservative dissention is exactly the problem for Romney, as identified by ABC News, who found a majority of Republicans resigned to the fact that he would be the eventual nominee, yet only a third who were ready to vote for him in the GOP race given the choices in the current field. “That result marks continuing compunctions about Romney within the GOP ranks,” ABC’s pollster Gary Langer wrote. “While he leads easily in trust to handle the economy, and especially in views of his electability, he falls short in two other key areas. Leaned Republicans by 31-22 percent trust Santorum over Romney to handle contentious social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, a 12-point gain for Santorum from last month. And Romney only runs evenly with Santorum, 25 to 27 percent, on who best reflects core GOP values.”
The current TPM Poll Average shows Santorum on the upswing in the last few days.
