New data from Gallup shows that Republicans may be finally coalescing around former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as their nominee ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary. A majority of both conservatives and moderates in the party now find Romney to be an acceptable standard-bearer (59 percent apiece), the only candidate to unite both voting blocks.
Romney’s broad acceptability across ideological lines is decidedly not the case for his competitors. Conservative Republicans view Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry as more acceptable than do moderate/liberal Republicans. On the other hand, moderate/liberal Republicans on average view Paul and Huntsman as more acceptable than conservatives…At the national level, Romney is in a strong front-runner position across several measures. He has broken the 30% barrier in terms of national support for the GOP nomination and leads his nearest competitor by 12 percentage points. About 6 in 10 Republicans say they expect he will be their nominee regardless of whom they personally support, and Romney is the only candidate that a majority of conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans see as an acceptable nominee.
