Businessman Herman Cain’s favorability among Republicans has been the key component of his surge in the polls, and new data from Gallup shows that the more Republican voters saw of him, the more they liked him. Cain increased in Gallup’s “positive intensity” score by about a third since February, which measures those voters who have a strongly favorable view of a candidate versus those who have a strongly unfavorable one.
The results come from data gathered before a Politico article appeared that described allegations of “sexual harassing” behavior toward two women while Cain was at the National Restaurant Association. Cain has denied the allegations.
The campaign has not been kind to most Republican candidates’ images this year. Compared with earlier this year, only Cain has seen improvement, and that may not hold as the public evaluates the allegations of harassment against him and his response to them…
But even candidates who started out with high profiles, such as Romney, Gingrich, and Paul, have failed to improve upon their initial early readings. That suggests the candidates’ performance on the campaign trail also has an effect on how Republicans view them. This is probably most clear in Gingrich’s case. His image suffered during the “Tiffanygate” scandal and then the shake-up of his campaign staff in the late spring and early summer, but he has recovered after positive reviews of his performance in debates.
