Romney Surpasses Santorum In National Gallup Tracking Poll

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Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s time atop the nightly Gallup tracking poll of the national Republican race is over — at least for today. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney overtook Santorum in the numbers released on Sunday, as the former senator’s support seems to be falling sharply after a lukewarm performance in Wednesday night’s CNN debate in Arizona. Romney sees 31 percent of the new Gallup tracking poll, Santorum 29, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 15 and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) 11.

Romney, despite being the consensus frontrunner in the race, has had a hard time maintaining a lead in the Gallup numbers, being outpaced for weeks at a time by other candidates in the field as the conservative wing of the GOP remains consistently mobile. Santorum’s lead was built on his wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and Missouri’s non-binding primary, all held February 7th. Nearly three weeks from that date, with millions of dollars spent on TV by the Romney campaign and allied super PACs plus a solid performance in the CNN debate, Romney is now up again.

The two men are now essentially locked in our TPM Poll Average of the national race, which combines all publicly available data. Here’s the trend since the first votes took place in Iowa.

 

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