Alex Roarty: Polls Suggest Contraception Divides Voters

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/polls-suggest-contraception-divides-voters-20120214

By Alex Roarty

Updated: February 14, 2012 | 6:29 p.m.
February 14, 2012 | 6:11 p.m.

Two new polls released on Tuesday indicate the contraception-coverage controversy currently roiling the White House might not be as politically damaging as critics have claimed.

The Obama administration’s decision to make all insurers provide birth control free of charge to patients drew a firestorm of criticism, spearheaded by the Catholic Church and Republican leaders who said it interfered with religious objections to contraception. The issue has become a centerpiece of the GOP presidential campaign.

By Friday, Obama announced that insurance companies -- not the religious groups themselves -- would cover the cost of contraception. It did little to quell criticism, but the White House said it was not meant to do so.

And it appears the issue isn’t a clear political loser for Obama: A poll from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that the issue closely divides the American public. Of Americans who have heard of the controversy, 44 percent said the religious groups should be required to cover contraception. Forty-eight percent of Americans said religious employers should be exempted from providing birth control as part of their health insurance coverage for workers.

Roughly six in 10 Americans have heard about the exemption, the poll found.

Among Catholics, the numbers are far worse for Obama: 55 percent say an exemption should be granted, compared to 39 percent who don’t.

But even if they disagree with the president, they have yet to let it affect their overall view of him. A Gallup poll also released on Tuesday showed the president’s standing among Catholics last week stood at 46 percent, just a three-point drop from the previous week. That was nearly the same level of support Obama enjoyed among non-Catholics, which stood at 47 percent.

The contraception mandate is a sensitive issue for Democrats because Catholics are typically a swing vote in general elections. The disgruntlement of several high-profile Obama allies, including Sen.Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, who is running for Senate in Virginia, proved Obama’s original decision had taken a toll on the community.

But Tuesday’s polls cast doubt on whether the issue will be an effective political wedge for Republicans in the fall.

The Pew poll surveyed 1,501 adults from Feb. 8 through Feb. 12 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. It sampled 337 Catholics with a sample error of 6.5 percentage points.

Gallup surveyed 775 Catholics from Feb. 6 through Feb. 12, with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Kim Geiger: Nevada poll: Romney leading by a wide margin

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-nevada-poll-romney-leading-by-a-wide-margin-20120202,0,2830303.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

By Kim Geiger

February 2, 2012, 8:03 a.m.

Reporting from Washington —

With just days before the Nevada GOP presidential caucuses, front runner Mitt Romney appears poised to win the state by a considerable margin.

A new poll by the Cannon Survey Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that Romney has the support of 45% of likely Republican caucus-goers, followed by Newt Gingrich with 25%, Rick Santorum with 11% and Ron Paulwith 9%.

Romney does particularly well with religious voters, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which commissioned the poll along with 8NewsNow. Among Mormons, who are a small percentage of the Nevadapopulation but made up one-quarter of GOP caucus-goers in 2008, Romney has 85.5% support. He also has the most support from Christians, Protestants and Catholics.

Romney is weaker when it comes to likely caucus-goers who identify strongly with the tea party movement. Those voters backed Gingrich over Romney, 37% to 27%, followed by Santorum (20%) and Paul (9%).

The poll was taken from Friday through Tuesday, before Romney had won the Florida primary.

Early indications from a poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling are that Romney may still hold a 20-percentage-point lead over Gingrich.

“Gingrich is barely above water on his favorability numbers,” pollster Tom Jensen told the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston. “Santorum is actually the most universally well-liked candidate but it’s not translating into intent to vote for him.”

Twenty-eight delegates are at stake in the Nevada contest, which will take place Saturday. Delegates will be awarded proportionally.

kim.geiger@latimes.com

Pew Hispanic Center: Latinos in the 2012 Election: Florida

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2179/florida-republican-primary-democrats-latino-registered-voters-hispanic?src=prc-newsletter

January 23, 2012

Final registration statistics for the Florida's January 31 presidential primary show that 1,473,920 Latinos are registered to vote statewide, making up 13.1% of the state's more than 11.2 million registered voters. Among Latino registered voters, 452,619 are registered as Republicans representing 11.1% of all Republican registered voters. And 564,513 Latino registered voters are registered as Democrats, representing 12.4% of all Democratic registered voters.

These data, and more, are contained in a new statistical profile of Latino eligible voters in Florida by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. In addition to official voter registration data, the statistical profile provides key demographic and socioeconomic information about Florida's 2.1 million Latino eligible voters and other major groups of eligible voters in Florida based on tabulations of the Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey.

See the full fact sheet.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis: Romney Attacks Gingrich in Close South Carolina Race

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-23/romney-attacks-gingrich-in-close-south-carolina-race.html

January 23, 2012, 10:32 AM EST
By Lisa Lerer and Julie Hirschfeld Davis

(Adds poll sample size in sixth paragraph. For more campaign news, see ELECT.)

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Striving to regain ground in the final hours before the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney raised questions about rival Newt Gingrich’s business dealings as the former House speaker aimed for an upset victory that could prolong the nominating race.

“I’d like to see what he actually told Freddie Mac,” Romney told reporters gathered outside his campaign headquarters in Greenville. “Let’s see what his report was.”

Gingrich, who might win or pull even with Romney in today’s voting, has faced questions from his Republican presidential rivals about his business dealings and consulting work for Freddie Mac, the government-backed home mortgage company, after he left Congress. Freddie Mac and its sister company, Fannie Mae, have received about $153 billion in taxpayer aid since losses from risky mortgages caused them to be brought under U.S. conservatorship in September 2008.

Romney’s campaign is saying the former Massachusetts governor may lose the state, leaving him with just one early state victory heading into the Jan. 31 Florida primary. Traveling the state yesterday, Romney sought to downplay expectations, describing the race as a “neck-and-neck” competition.

“I said from the very beginning South Carolina is an uphill battle for a guy from Massachusetts,” he told reporters in Gilbert, South Carolina. “We’re battling hard.”

The winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the Republican nomination since 1980.

Slipping Support

A poll released yesterday, conducted by Clemson University, put Gingrich ahead of Romney, 32 percent to 26 percent. Trailing are U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas at 11 percent and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum at 9 percent, with 20 percent undecided. The survey of 429 Republicans who said they intend to vote today was conducted from Jan. 18 to yesterday and has an error margin of plus-or-minus 4.7 percentage points.

During the first week in January, Romney had an 18-point lead in a South Carolina poll. Now, he and his advisers may face a drawn-out nomination fight extending into the spring.

Both candidates were scheduled to appear at the same time at the same barbecue restaurant in Greenville. Romney arrived at Tommy’s Country Ham House 45 minutes early and had left by the time Gingrich arrived at the Greenville restaurant.

“Where’s Mitt?” Gingrich said. “I thought he was going to stay and maybe we’d have a little debate.”

‘Massachusetts Moderate’

Gingrich appealed to diners to remember that “I am the only conservative who has the opportunity to stop a Massachusetts moderate.”

Today, Romney told reporters that he would attend the next Republican debate scheduled for Jan. 23 in Tampa, Florida, a sign that his campaign anticipates a longer struggle for the nomination.

Romney supporters argue that quickly claiming the nomination would allow the party more time to prepare for the campaign against Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I want to end it in South Carolina because I’m watching the Democrats raise money by the day,” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Romney backer, said in Greenville this morning. “It is good for all Republicans and conservatives to end this in South Carolina.”

Romney’s efforts to lock up the nomination were dealt another blow late last night, when Republican Party leaders in Iowa officially declared Santorum the winner of the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Iowa party officials had named Romney the winner in the early morning hours on Jan. 4 because he was ahead of Santorum by eight votes in its initial tabulation.

Nominating History

The changing vote total means that Romney can no longer claim to have made history by becoming the first Republican non- incumbent to win both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary since the caucuses became the start of the presidential nominating process in 1976.

Seeking to regain ground, Romney and his backers have attempted to focus attention on Gingrich, raising questions about his record in Congress.

Yesterday, Romney called on Gingrich to release details of a 1997 congressional investigation into ethics charges when he was House speaker. The investigation resulted in Gingrich being reprimanded by fellow lawmakers and charged with a $300,000 fine in chamber-reimbursement costs.

Gingrich scoffed at the demand, referring to what he said is a 900-page cache of information publicly available on the matter and Romney’s refusal to immediately release his tax returns.

Disclosure Demands

“Give me a break,” Gingrich told reporters after the town hall in Orangeburg. “I refuse to take seriously any request from the Romney campaign to disclose anything, because they’re clearly not going to disclose anything at any level that involves him.”

Romney, a multimillionaire from his days as a private- equity executive, has been trailed by questions during the South Carolina campaign about why he’s refusing to provide any tax returns until April -- when his party’s nomination contestmay effectively be over.

On Jan. 17, Romney said his effective tax rate is “probably” close to 15 percent because much of his income comes from investments.

Romney supporters worked to discount the tax issue, arguing that voters were more focused on jobs and the economy.

--With assistance from John McCormick in Chicago. Editors: Ann Hughey, Christian Thompson.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lisa Lerer in Washington at llerer@bloomberg.net; Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at jdavis159@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net

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.