I may have to eat my words

I've frequently said that Newt would never be president.  That may still be safe.  But he showing some scary strength in the polls.  I think he has a real chance of being the nominee.

 

He has shot to second in the CNN/ORC national poll and only a couple points behind Romney.  The latest PPP national poll has Gingrich in the lead with an astounding 28% with Cain a close second at 25%.  Back in early September, Romney was polling at 18%. He got a bump in early October to 22% (when Cain was at 30%) but is back down in this poll to 18%.  Though the ordering is a bit different in this poll from the CNN/ORC, the directional dynamics are the same.  That is, Romney remains stagnant, Cain has shed support and Gingrich has surged.

 

The crosstabs of the PPP poll are not real good news for Romney.  I think they may reveal Gingrich to be an even bigger threat than Cain was (yes, past tense).  Romney enjoys pretty good favorability numbers across age, gender and Tea Party.  Gingrich is showing very strong favorabililty across all age groups, with both Tea Party and not-TP and, surprisingly, both genders.  Not only that, enjoys strong favorability with the supporters of the major not-Romney candidates (Cain, Perry, Bachmann), and good favoribility with Romney supporters.  As it stands now, Gingrich is poised to peel supporters from Cain, Perry and Bachmann to consilidate the not-Romney support in a way none of the others could do at this point.  And he could peel support from Romney as well.  Romney supporters have seem to dislike Cain and Perry (over 50% view them unfavorably) but over 50% view Newt favorably, the only other candidate they view favorably.

 

Romney's hopes were to have the not-Romneys remain divided leaving Romney with a plurality and/or to have Romney be everybody else's second choice and peel off supporters from other candidates as they factor in electability.  Newt may get a plurality outright (as he does now in this poll).  I think it a real possibility that Cain supporters figure that Newt is a stronger candidate and make an easy shift to Gingrich giving him a large plurality.  Same for Perry supporters unless Perry starts to improve.

 

We'll see if Newt can pull together a strong campaign staff (or maybe he already has) that can withstand and respond to the attacks that will be coming his way now.  But we've already seen the candidate himself is a nimble and resilient force so that a weak staff would not be as big a detriment (in the short term) as it obviously was to Cain.

 

Folks like me who like all the candidates (except Huntsman and Paul) will need to calculate between Romney and Gingrich.  On electibility, will Romney's Bain days hurt him more than Newt's marital infidelity and House Speakership.  On risks to conservative agenda, who will be more likely to stray from orthodoxy.  Right now, it's a toss up on both electability and risk.

 

--dmac