Gov. Rick Perry Leads New Gallup Poll By 12 Points Over Romney

Ed Morrissey - Rick Perry will pick up a conservative endorsement from Capitol Hill, according to a report today from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Senator James Inhofe told a Chamber of Commerce audience at the Tulsa Press Club that he plans on making good to a promise he made Rick Perry a year ago to be the first to endorse him for President:

“I called Rick Perry a year ago and told him, ‘If you’re running for president, I’ll be the first to endorse you,’” Inhofe said at a State Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Tulsa Press Club.
“I’m going to be that person on Monday.”

Inhofe also said that he has reservations about other members in the field, but none with Perry:

Inhofe said he “likes Mitt Romney, but he’s a little mushy on environmental issues” and “Newt Gingrich, I always have this vision of him sitting on the couch holding hands with Nancy Pelosi,” but that he has no reservations about Perry.

I’m not surprised at all by Inhofe’s decision to make an early endorsement for Perry.  Six months ago, I interviewed the Senator in his office to discuss his fight against the EPA, and I brought up Perry’s battles with the regulatory agency.  Inhofe immediately mentioned how it would strengthen Perry as a presidential candidate, and charmingly diagnosed Perry’s denial of interest in the race at the time (at 11:35):

EM: Your neighbor to the south, Texas, has been told by the EPA that they are no longer able to, ah, to control their own quality standards, because of a dispute between Texas and the EPA.  Do you think that that’s going to be a big platform on which this is going to be fought, because obviously Rick Perry says he’s going to fight the EPA all the way down the line.
INHOFE: Rick Perry’s doing a great job, by the way, and, ah (laughter), he’s looking better and better in the presidential race.
EM: Well, he says he’s not in it, but I’m not sure I’m buying that.
INHOFE: Well, we can all be cute about that … You remember, it wasn’t more than a year ago that they came to kill eleven of his coal-fired generating plants.  And all he’s trying to do is just provide energy for the people of his state, Texas.  So this is consistent with the fact that the EPA is going to try to shut down any — you watch and see what they’re going to try to do in Oklahoma now that we have a good, conservative Republican governor …

Inhofe has been waiting a long time to make this endorsement, and it should help Perry gain some traction among conservatives, especially in the Midwest.
Update: Looks like Inhofe isn’t the only one making a decision.  Perry gained 11 points since last month’s Gallup survey to take a 12-point lead among Republican primary voters:

Shortly after announcing his official candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has emerged as rank-and-file Republicans’ current favorite for their party’s 2012 presidential nomination. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say they are most likely to support Perry, with Mitt Romney next, at 17%. …
Perry is a strong contender among key Republican subgroups. Older Republicans and those living in the South show especially strong support for him, at or near 40%. Conservative Republicans strongly favor Perry over Romney, but liberal and moderate Republicans support the two about equally. Perry’s support is also above average among religious Republicans.

The topline survey result doesn’t include Palin, who will make an appearance in Iowa over Labor Day weekend. With Palin in the mix, however, the news stays good for Perry, with 25% and an 11-point lead maintained over Romney.  Palin ties Ron Paul for 3rd with 11%.
It’s bad news for everyone else except, er, Ron Paul, who gained three points in the same period to come in 3rd at 13% in the topline response.  Romney falls to 17%, and Michele Bachmann to 10%, while undecideds declined one point to 17%, the lowest level yet in the Gallup series. Perry wins most of the subgroups – both men and women, all age demos except the youngest (he comes in second to Ron Paul, 21% to 29%), all regional demos except the East, where he barely misses a tie with Romney 16% to 17%, and all church-attendance demos.

Gov. Rick Perry Leads New Iowa Poll 22% For Romney 19%, 18 %Bachmann

Ed Morrissey - A couple of caveats are in order before we start looking at this poll.  First, it comes from PPP, a Democratic pollster which has had its fair share of difficulties in sampling Republicans.  It’s also early in the race, as Rick Perry just starts getting vetted and Sarah Palin hasn’t yet begun to campaign, if in fact she decides to campaign at all.
Still, this is a rather dramatic result:

The race is pretty close four ways in Iowa but Rick Perry is the new favorite among Republican voters in the state. Among announced candidates he’s at 22% to 19% for Mitt Romney, 18% for Michele Bachmann, and 16% for Ron Paul. Further back are Herman Cain at 7%, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum at 5%, and Jon Huntsman at 3%.
If you throw Sarah Palin into the mix the numbers are pretty similar with Perry at 21%, Romney at 18%, Bachmann at 15%, Paul at 12%, and Palin registering at only 10%.

I’m surprised and a little skeptical about two results.  Mitt Romney’s strong performance in Iowa seems a little questionable.  While he has done some campaigning in the state, he has given the impression that he will focus less there than on a strong performance in New Hampshire.  I’d also have guessed that Palin would outperform Ron Paul in the state.  PPP does note that this survey shows Romney losing significant ground, from 26% in June.
Assuming this is accurate, then it looks like Michele Bachmann didn’t win much for her efforts in Ames.  I had written at the time that the straw poll seemed more likely to produce the #3 and #4 candidate than a frontrunner, and this poll suggests the same thing.  While Romney doesn’t necessarily need a good performance in Iowa, Bachmann has no path to the nomination without winning the state.  And it’s the Tea Party base that she courts that — so far — has swung instead to Perry:

Only 33% of Republican voters in Iowa identify themselves as members of the Tea Party but a broad advantage with them is driving Perry’s lead. He gets 32% to 22% for Bachmann, and 19% for Paul. Romney is all the way back in 6th place with those voters at only 6%. Romney doesn’t need to win Tea Party voters to win in Iowa but he needs to do a whole lot better than that. With the majority of Republicans who don’t consider themselves Tea Partiers Romney actually leads Perry and Bachmann with 30% to their 16% but it’s not enough to make up for his poor performance with the far right faction of the party.

It’s an interesting first look at the state since Perry’s entry.  We’ll see if this is a reliable indicator or an outlier when other pollsters conclude their own Iowa surveys.
Update: Not surprisingly, Romney leads in Michigan, where his father served as Governor.  The Epic-MRA poll had some bad news for another favorite son:

Romney leads Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 32 to 17 percent. The EPIC-MRA poll surveyed a relatively small sample size, but Perry’s strong second-place showing in a state outside his natural base across the South is notable.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was third at 12 percent, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin all tied for fourth at 5 percent. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., earned just one percent of the vote in his home state; of all the candidates tested on his home turf, McCotter had the lowest name-identification, as nearly half of Republican voters said they didn’t recognize his name.

Remind me again — why is McCotter running for President?
This poll had a significantly smaller sample size than PPP’s in Iowa (210 to 317, respectively), for a much more populous state.  As National Journal notes, the results are good news for Perry and another indicator that this will become a two-man race, barring any late entries.
Update II: PPP says they have a national survey coming out tomorrow that shows Rick Perry with a double-digit lead over Romney for the Republican nomination.  According to their Twitter feed:

11:34 (CT): Our national GOP poll, out tomorrow, is better for Perry even than the Iowa one. Double digit lead.
11:36: Nationally, if it came down to a 2 person race: Perry 52, Romney 36. Mitt needs to try to wrap it up before it gets to that point.
11:40: More evidence Bachmann has maxed out support- down 9 to Romney, 30 to Perry in national heads to heads