There are signs this morning that the Romney campaign is prepping supporters for a loss in South Carolina tomorrow night. The upside — or what people think is the upside — for Romney is his continuing strength nationally. Indeed, the big news of the last couple weeks was that Romney finally seemed to be breaking out of the sub-30 box he’d languished in for so long. But the latest polls show the national primary electorate just as fluid as it was. Frank Newport of Gallup — usually your classic hyper-cautious poll analyst — talked about Romney’s numbers “collapsing” nationwide. I’m not sure I would have used quite that word. But big picture, he’s right. Look at these numbers.
Speaker of the Kansas House apologizes for sending an emailing praying for Obama’s “days [to] be few and brief.”
Pressed on tax returns, Romney calls for Gingrich to release 90s ethics report. And not just Mitt. His surrogates — like fmr. Gov. John Sununu (R-NH) — are pushing the same thing.
We’ve obtained an email sent out recently by Bain & Co to recent recruits on how to deal with questions about power-alum Mitt Romney. The gist is: Mitt is awesome! But as long we’re on the subject we’re Bain & Co, not Bain Capital where all those people got fired. Read it.
Republicans give Romney free advice on how not to blow the race he’s actually pretty much already won.
PPP is out with its final numbers going into tomorrow’s South Carolina primary. It’s 37% Gingrich, 28% Romney, 16% Santorum, 14% Paul. That’s polling of 1540 voters over the last three days. In the calls they made tonight, Newt was up 40% to 26% over Romney. One night, especially a Friday night, is not much to go on. But it’s in line with the trend since Monday which has shown Gingrich rocketing into the lead.
Anything can happen. Polls can be wrong. But polls seldom give us such clear guidance on what to expect. Read More
We’ve just released the latest (and likely final) TPM Poll Average of tomorrow’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary. It’s Gingrich 35.7%, Romney 26.4%, Santorum 13.9%, Paul 12.8%. This is includes the final polling from PPP that came out in the last hour. (Full Trend Chart after the jump.)
To put this in some perspective. On the January 15th, the date of the debate many credit with igniting his current run, Gingrich was at 21.1%. Tonight he’s at 35.7%. A move of almost 15 points in 5 days. Over the same period Romney has dropped around 6 points. Read More