By Jennifer Jacobs, The Des Moines Register
With the exception of Newt Gingrich, each GOP presidential candidate gets a thumbs-down from at least one-fifth of Iowa’s likely caucusgoers, who say they wouldn’t support the candidate if he or she were the nominee, The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll shows.
But as oppositional research against Gingrich seeps into the bloodstream here, that could change, politics experts said. In the short weeks before the holidays and the Iowa caucuses, all the rival hopefuls are fighting against “the Gingrich who stole Christmas” — the candidate who has big-footed to the top of the polls.
When Iowa’s likely caucusgoers were asked about their enthusiasm for each GOP candidate were he or she to become the nominee, the responses revealed:
Ron Paul isn’t as fringe as some people think.
The anti-Mitt Romney story line is exaggerated.
There’s more dissatisfaction with Michele Bachmann than with any other candidate actively competing in Iowa.
The relish for Gingrich is intense.
Selzer & Co. of Des Moines conducted the poll of 401 likely Republican caucusgoers Nov. 27-30. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
The highlights:
COOLNESS FOR MUCH OF REPUBLICAN FIELD
A third of likely caucusgoers say they wouldn’t support Jon Huntsman if he were the nominee; 27 percent wouldn’t back Bachmann; 22 percent, Paul and Rick Santorum; 21 percent, Romney; and 20 percent, Rick Perry. But just 12 percent would not support Gingrich if he’s the nominee. Twenty-six percent said they wouldn’t support Herman Cain. The polling took place before Cain quit the race.
Does the dull enthusiasm for most of the field spell trouble for the eventual nominee, since likely caucusgoers are among the most active party members?
Not really, several GOP pollsters said. Iowa Republicans are in the heat of the battle, rooting for their favorite candidate, but the base will eventually come home.
“Kind of like, I will root for the Giants in the playoffs till they lose, then I will figure out who to root for of the remaining teams,” said pollster Adam Geller of the New Jersey-based National Research Inc.
Pollster Randy Gutermuth of Virginia-based American Viewpoint said: “You’d be hard-pressed to find McCain supporters in 2000 who didn’t vote for President Bush in the general.”
The deep antipathy in the party against Democratic President Barack Obama will be enough to energize Republicans to turn out in the general election, even if they were initially so-so about their own nominee, the pollsters predicted.
The desire to vote against a candidate is “a huge motivating factor,” Geller said. “In post-election polls, we ask all the time if their vote was for someone or against someone, and the against is always relatively high.”
Inspirational leaders like Ronald Reagan come once in a generation, if that, Gutermuth said.
“It’s much easier for people to get energized when they are fed up with the status quo,” he said.
HOT FOR GINGRICH, BUT ATTACKS ON WAY
The large gap between enthusiasm for Gingrich and enthusiasm for other candidates offers one more piece of evidence that the former U.S. House Speaker is in a good position in Iowa.
Forty-four percent say they would be “very enthusiastic” in their support for Gingrich were he to be the nominee. That’s way ahead of Paul at 31 percent and Romney at 28 percent.
Combined, 85 percent would be very enthusiastic or OK with Gingrich as the party’s standard-bearer.
However, passion for Gingrich could wane now that his GOP rivals are on the attack, said John Epperson, a political science professor at Simpson College in Indianola.
“We all get a little bit fooled. We all know who Gingrich is — he’s been around forever. But people forget a lot,” Epperson said. “You need to remind people that he was taking lobbying money, taking multiple positions, hanging out with Nancy Pelosi — all those things that might irritate some element of the electorate, especially in Iowa.”
Geller said: “Newt’s biggest obstacle will be Newt.”
Several poll respondents who said they would not support Gingrich said it bugs them that Gingrich portrays himself as the white knight who never attacks others, when his career is strewn with bodies.
“He’s brutal. He’s the epitome of the evil old GOP machine,” said Kent McCartt, 51, a restaurant manager from Lost Nation.
PAUL’S NOT SUCH A FRINGE CANDIDATE
Results defy the conventional wisdom that Paul is a niche candidate. Seventy-six percent of poll respondents say they would be very enthusiastic or at least OK with supporting Paul as their nominee.
Thirty-one percent say they’d be very enthusiastic, and 45 percent OK with the choice.
Some of that support is charitable, the pollsters said.
Gutermuth said: “I’m sure he will do well in Iowa, but I think some of that double negative of ‘not not supporting him’ is due to voters not believing he has a realistic chance of being the nominee.”
Several poll respondents reached by phone this week say they trust Paul: They trust him to strip federal funding from abortion provider Planned Parenthood, to cut $1 trillion from the budget, and to make sure their sons and daughters don’t go off to fight a war unless Congress authorizes it.
Paul’s supporters are not inclined to like other candidates much, said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.
They are the most likely to say they won’t support other candidates were they to become the nominee.
ANTI-ROMNEY NOTION IS EXAGGERATED
Romney gets a lukewarm response on the enthusiasm question — but no cooler than candidates other than Gingrich.
Selzer said: “The national media keeps saying there’s this anyone-but-Romney thing, and I just don’t see that here.”
If Romney were the nominee, 28 percent of all caucusgoers would support him very enthusiastically, and most of the rest (48 percent) would be OK with the choice. Twenty-one percent would not support Romney, which is on a par with most other candidates.
Fellow pollster Gutermuth agreed that the story line about an anyone-but-Mitt sentiment is overblown.
“Very much so,” Gutermuth said. “All the guns have been aimed at him for months as the front-runner, including from the Obama team, and he has been able to weather the storm.”
Sioux City Republican Kevin Godwin, a 47-year-old architect, said he simply likes Romney better than the rest.
“Romney would not be as divisive as Gingrich. I remember how he was in the 1990s. He was so polarizing — he couldn’t pull people together.”
DISSATISFACTION WITH BACHMANN
This is a tough audience for Bachmann: 27 percent of likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa say they would not support her if she were to be the nominee. Opposition is higher only for Huntsman, at 33 percent.
“She’s gotten some unusually harsh treatment from the media, and I think a lot of it comes to that,” Geller said.
Cedar Rapids resident Jack Kenney, 52, a national sales manager, said he wouldn’t back Bachmann because she’s “too strident. She’s just too extreme. Just yesterday she said the current administration is not a friend of Israel. She puts out too much misinformation.”
ABOUT THE POLL
The Iowa Poll, conducted Nov. 27-30 for The Des Moines Register by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on interviews with 2,222 registered Republican and independent voters in Iowa ages 18 or older, of which 401 said they would definitely or probably participate in the January 2012 Republican caucuses. Interviewers contacted individuals randomly selected from the Iowa voter registration list by telephone, stratifying contact by age. The full sample of 2,222 respondents was adjusted for age and sex based on distribution among active Republican and no-party registered voters. Questions asked of the 401 likely Republican caucusgoers have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error. Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register is prohibited.
