Last week brought a survey from Magellan Strategies that showed a new result in the New Hampshire Republican primary — former Mass Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were locked in a statistical tie for first place among a large sample of nearly 750 GOP primary voters. But a new poll from Suffolk University released Monday night found the race to be essentially where its always been, Romney with about two-fifths of the electorate and the rest of the field duking it out for the balance.
Romney leads the GOP field with 41 percent in the Suffolk poll, followed by Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) tied for second with 14 percent each. The other GOP candidates were each in single digits.
“Every Republican candidate that surges in the national polls hits a firewall in New Hampshire,” said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center in a release. “We’ve seen this with surges from Bachmann, Perry, Cain and now Gingrich. A Romney loss here is highly improbable, and Romney’s best insurance policy in New Hampshire is Ron Paul, whose fixed support takes 14 percent off the table.”
One thing was similar between the Suffolk and the Magellan polls: a complete turnaround in Gingrich’s favorability among Republican voters in New Hampshire. A Suffolk poll from September found that a majority of Republicans, 52 percent, had an unfavorable view of the former Speaker, against only 36 percent who had a favorable one.
Two months later, 45 percent of the GOP voters polled in the state said they had a favorable view of Gingrich, against only 37 percent with a negative one, a fifteen point drop. Consequently, Gingrich improved his finish in the trial heat by ten points, going from four percent in September to 14 now. The Magellan poll found an even more dramatic swing of nearly 30 points in Gingrich’s favorability rating over a three month period.
The TPM Poll Average of the Republican race in New Hampshire shows Romney maintaining his lead overall, with Gingrich on the upswing.
The Suffolk poll used 400 live telephone interviews with likely GOP primary voters conducted Nov. 16th to the 20th. It has a sampling error of 4.9 percent.
