Last PPP daily tracking poll before primary: Romney 39%, Gingrich 31%, Santorum 15%, Paul 11%

[highplainsdem]

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/01/romney-headed-for-florida-victory.html

PPP's tracking of the Florida Republican primary wraps up with Mitt Romney at 39%, Newt Gingrich at 31%, Rick Santorum at 15%, and Ron Paul at 11%. Our three days of tracking found very little movement in the race: Romney was at 39-40% every day, Gingrich was at 31-32% every day, Santorum was at 14-15% every day, and Paul was at 9-11% every day.

The lack of movement in the final 72 hours of the campaign is a far cry from the dramatic shifts Florida Republicans made in their preferences over the last four months. In late September we found Mitt Romney ahead of Newt Gingrich by 20 points in the state. By late November, as he surged nationally, Gingrich had taken a 30 point led over Romney. But then our first poll in early January, after poor performances by Gingrich in Iowa and New Hampshire, found Romney back on top by 15 points. Riding a (short lived) wave of momentum off his South Carolina victory, Gingrich led our Florida poll last week by 5 points. By the end of the week the race had swung back to Romney and over the last three days his lead has been steady in the 7-8 point range.

One thing Romney did a great job of was getting his voters out early. With the third of the electorate who have already cast their ballots he leads 45-32. That means Gingrich would have to win election day voters by somewhere in the 6-8 point range to pull off the Florida upset, but we find that Romney still has a 36-30 advantage with those are waiting to vote tomorrow.

Romney will win in Florida tomorrow because he's winning his core groups of support by wide margins, while holding Gingrich to single digit advantages with his key constituencies. Romney is winning moderates by 39 (53-14), seniors by 12 (46-32), and women by 12 (42-30). Meanwhile Gingrich is only up 8 with Tea Partiers (39-31) and 6 with Evangelicals (38-32), groups he won by huge margins in South Carolina.

-snip-

[rocktivity]

1. I would be as delighted with a single-digit margin of victory

as Newt.


rocktivity

[Found in Yonkers]

5. I've already predicted only a 3-point win for Willard

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002243388

[K8-EEE]

2. Go Newt GO!!!

Newt is so Fatal Attraction! He's like, leaving a cassette tape in the RNC cars saying hey GOP, you are NOT going to IGNORE me!

Gotta love it!

[brooklynite]

3. Pretty mediocre polling...

...for a presumed nominee whose opponents are barely breathing.

[highplainsdem]

4. Especially when the ratio of pro-Romney TV ads to pro-Gingrich was about 60 to 1, according to news

stories like this one:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-01-27/gop-primaries-ad-spending-super-pacs/52895296/1

The spending is leaving its mark on Florida, the site of today's crucial GOP primary. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and his allies, especially the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, aired 12,768 television commercials in the state through Wednesday compared with 210 by former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his supporters, a study released Monday by the Wesleyan Media Project shows.

"It's one-sided domination," said Erika Franklin Fowler, the project's co-director and a Wesleyan University political scientist. "If you have a television on in Orlando or Fort Myers or West Palm Beach, you are seeing Romney ads and very few pro-Gingrich ads."

[RickFromMN]

6. Question please: where is the Koch brothers' money going these days?

I expected to hear about Koch super PAC money.

I have the impression the Koch brothers fund the Tea Party.

If the Tea Party doesn't like Romney, and Sarah Palin endorses Newt,
why haven't the Koch brothers come to Newt's aide?

Alternatively, why haven't the Koch brothers sent word the Tea Party should support Romney?

[gopiscrap]

7. That's closer than I thought

if it holds Willard's in big trouble!!!