Kim Geiger: Gingrich camp: Romney in 'panic' mode as poll suggests collapse

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-gingrich-camp-romney-in-panic-mode-as-poll-suggests-collapse-20120120,0,3899909.story

By Kim Geiger

January 20, 2012, 3:32 p.m.

Reporting from Charleston, S.C.—

Two new polls out on Friday suggest trouble for Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney.

Gallup’s tracking poll shows Romney’s lead nationally – which was 23 percentage points last week – has fallen considerably. He still leads the pack of Republican contenders – which is now considerably smaller after the departure of Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry this week – but by just 10 percentage points.

Romney has 30% support, followed by Newt Gingrich with 20% and Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, who are tied at 13%

“Clearly things are collapsing,” Gallup political director Frank Newport said in an appearance on MSNBC earlier today.

But a poll out of South Carolina is more immediately troublesome for Romney.

Clemson University’s newest 2012 Palmetto Poll shows Romney trailing Gingrich in the South's first primary state, where voting starts tomorrow morning. The poll found Gingrich with 32% support, followed by Romney with 26%, Paul with 11% and Santorum with 9%.

The poll was initiated last week but was recalibrated on Wednesday and Thursday “to measure changing dynamics.” Among them was the allegation by Gingrich’s second wife that he asked her for an “open marriage” when he and his current wife, Callista, were having an affair more than a decade ago. Marianne Gingrich made the claim in a television interview that aired last night, but news of the allegation spread before the interview aired; it was the first question posed at last night’s CNN debate.

“We expect a reaction by the electorate to the personal revelations about Gingrich to be registered on Saturday; however, we do not think it will be substantial enough to erase the lead Gingrich has over Romney,” Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor, said in a statement.

Woodard predicts that Gingrich “will win the South Carolina primary.”

Romney, who not long ago seemed poised to take the state, has tried to play down expectations here.

"I sure would like to win South Carolina, but I know that if those polls were right, regardless of who gets the final number, we're both going to get a lot of delegates," he said.

(Actually, South Carolina will contribute just 25 delegates to the total of 2,268 delegates who will convene at the national convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer. The state GOP lost half its delegates because it chose to hold its primary before Feb. 1, violating national party rules.)

Lashing back at Gingrich for making an issue last night of Romney’s reluctance to release his tax returns, Romney on Friday called on Gingrich to release confidential documents relating to an ethics investigation of him while he was speaker of the House.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond responded by suggesting that Romney was reacting to the latest Gallup poll and had gone "on a panic attack calling on Newt Gingrich to release records which have been available to the public for over a decade.”

Romney, however, was referring to files from the investigation that are still sealed, which Gingrich referenced last December when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hinted she would one day discuss what was in those files.

Gingrich said doing so would be "a fundamental violation of the rules of the House" and said he hoped "that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it."

kim.geiger@latimes.com

Alex Roarty: Romney's Support Dropping Nationally, Too

http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/01/romneys-support-dropping-natio.php

By Alex Roarty

January 20, 2012 | 5:12 PM

The recent anti-Mitt Romney contagion is spreading beyond South Carolina.

Gallup's tracking poll of the Republican presidential race reported Friday that the GOP front-runner -- whose nomination seemed inevitable as recently as Monday -- has watched his national lead among Republicans erode this week. On Monday, the ex-Bay State governor stood at 37 percent, according to Gallup. At the time, Newt Gingrich had just 14 percent of the vote.

By Friday, Gingrich had cut Romney's edge by more than half. Romney's support had fallen to 30 percent, while Gingrich surged to 20 percent. That's 13-point swing between the two candidates in five days.

The Gallup poll is evidence Romney's collapse isn't confined to just South Carolina, where surveys show him now trailing Gingrich. A Clemson University 2012 Palmetto Poll released Friday shows the onetime House speaker leading the state at 32 percent, six points above his Massachusetts rival. The forces pulling him down in the Palmetto State have clearly reached across its borders -- something Romney acknowledged as much Friday.

"I expect that Newt will win some primaries and contests, and I expect I will as well," he told conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham. "My job is to make sure I get the most delegates by the time we're finished -- hopefully, 1,150 or so -- and I have a path to do that. But I'm not expecting win them all."

It's an answer reminiscent of the one Romney used to give before Iowa and New Hampshire, when his status as the race's relatively weak front-runner had him preparing for a long, drawn-out campaign. The chances of a quick knock-out seemed tantalizingly close after the first two nomination contests, which originally appeared to boost him to escape velocity from the rest of the field (hence his rise to 37 percent nationally by Monday). Instead, he's once again falling back to earth.

Alex Roarty: Poll: Romney Cruising Past Rivals in Ohio

http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/poll-romney-cruising-past-rivals-in-ohio-20120118

By Alex Roarty

Updated: January 18, 2012 | 8:55 a.m.
January 18, 2012 | 6:00 a.m.

A Quinnipiac University survey of Ohio released on Wednesday shows Mitt Romney holding a comfortable edge over his Republican primary rivals in the key battleground state, leading with 27 percent of the vote.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are locked in a battle for second place, at 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively, while Rep. Ron Paul of Texas trails at just 10 percent. Texas Gov. Rick Perry sits in last place, at 4 percent.

Romney’s advantageous numbers in the Buckeye State -- whose primary will be held on Super Tuesday in early March -- are reflective of national polls, which show him close to surging beyond the GOP field's reach after back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire. Gallup’s Daily Tracking Pollreported on Tuesday that the front-runner stood at 34 percent nationally, more than double the support of his next-closest opponent.

But maybe more importantly for the candidate on the verge of winning his party’s nomination, his strength transfers into the general election: Quinnipiac found Obama only narrowly edging past Romney in Ohio, 44 percent to 42 percent. The head-to-head matchup between the two men has been tight since the summer -- no more than four points have separated them in five Quinnipiac surveys since July.

That’s a good sign for Romney in what has historically been the country’s quintessential battleground state. And it’s yet another warning for Obama that despite a recent uptick in the polls, he remains weak with the white working-class voters who still constitute the state’s largest electoral bloc.

Just 35 percent of white voters without a college education approve of the president’s performance, the poll found. Although Obama does slightly better among white voters with a college education (44 percent approve), only 38 percent of whites overall in Ohio think he deserves reelection.

Among all voters in the state, a majority, 51 percent, disapprove of his performance -- only 44 percent approve. His numbers are worse among independents, who disapprove of him by a 53 percent to 41 percent margin.

Obama’s struggles with blue-collar whites, which date back to his 2008 campaign, are a primary reason he has shifted his focus away from older, whiter states like Ohio to more diverse states like Virginia and North Carolina, whose minority populations remain more supportive of the president. If Obama wants to repeat his 2008 victory in the Buckeye State, he'll need to make inroads with a group of voters who have taken a resiliently stubborn view of his presidency.

Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,610 registered voters from Jan. 9 to Jan. 16 for the poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points. For the GOP primary, 542 Republican voters were surveyed, for a margin of error of +/- 4.2 percentage points.