CBS Poll: Ron Paul Tie Obama

Steven Shepard - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, run neck-and-neck with President Obama in a general-election matchup, according to a new CBS News poll released late on Monday that shows the two front-runners in Tuesday's New Hampshire GOP primary running stronger against the president than their fellow Republicans. Romney posts a two-point lead over Obama, 47 percent to 45 percent, within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. He leads Obama, 45 percent to 39 percent, among independent voters.

From National Journal:

CAMPAIGN 2012
Meet the Billionaire Who Wants to Help Newt Gingrich Destroy Mitt Romney

PICTURES
Biggest Super PAC Donors

ANALYSIS
Bain, Schmain -- A Business Background Doesn't Matter

Obama's lead over Paul is just one point, 46 percent to 45 percent, as Paul leads among independents by 7 points.
(OOPS: Apparent Google Glitch Shows New Hampshire Primary Results)
The president posts more significant leads over the other GOP candidates, but against each he is below the critical 50-percent threshold: He leads former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 49 percent to 41 percent; former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, 48 percent to 41 percent; Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 49 percent to 42 percent; and former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., 47 percent to 43 percent.
Among all adults, just 45 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president, slightly worse than the 47-percent approval rating he posted last month. Among independents, 38 percent approve of Obama's job performance, while 49 percent disapprove.
(CAMPAIGN 2012: Poll: Romney, Paul Tie Obama)
Results released earlier Monday among Republicans who said they intend to vote in their state's presidential nominating contest showed Romney running slightly ahead of the rest of the field, but nearly a third of Republicans are undecided or seeking a candidate not currently in the race.
The CBS News poll was conducted Jan. 4-8, surveying 1,413 adults, for a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. The poll includes a subsample of 1.247 registered voters.

PPP: Romney Leads in South Carolina

Mitt Romney's taken a modest lead in South Carolina. He's at 30% there to 23% for Newt Gingrich and 19% for Rick Santorum. None of the other candidates hit double digits- Ron Paul at 9%, Rick Perry at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 4%, and Buddy Roemer at 1% round out the field.
Romney's benefiting from very strong personal favorability numbers in the state- 60% of voters see him favorably to only 29% with a negative opinion, numbers that far outstrip anything he ever posted in our Iowa polling. And he also has the most committed support out of the leading contenders. 67% of his supporters say they'll definitely vote for him, compared to only 59% of Gingrich and 44% of Santorum's voters who say that. Among 'solidly committed' voters Romney's lead expands to double digits at 37% to 26% for Gingrich and 15% for Santorum.
Gingrich may be in second place right now but the candidate who would have the best chance of beating Romney in South Carolina is Santorum. He edges out Romney as the candidate with the best favorability rating at 63/21. We tested hypothetical head to head match ups between Romney and the other leading Republican candidates in the instance that were some drop outs before the primary. Romney defeats Gingrich handily in such a match, 49-35.  But Santorum runs only slightly behind Romney at 45-40.
There are two things that taken together might make it possible for Santorum to upset Romney in South Carolina. The first is both Gingrich and Perry dropping out.  Gingrich's voters prefer Santorum over Romney 52-37 and Perry's do by a 54-41 margin.  Either of them dropping out would give Santorum a big boost.
The other thing that would give Santorum the potential for an upset is a Jim DeMint endorsement. 31% of voters say his nod would make them more likely to vote for a candidate.  That compares to 15% for Lindsey Graham, 14% for Nikki Haley, 13% for Mark Sanford, and 11% for John McCain. There's no doubt who has the greatest potential to be a king maker in the Palmetto State.

Other notes from our South Carolina poll:
-Although Democrats and independents can vote in the Republican primary if they want to, very few plan to do so. Only 18% of the likely electorate is non-GOP, less than it was in Iowa. And those folks aren't having much of an impact on the race. Romney leads Gingrich by 7 and Santorum by 11 with Republican voters only, the same margin he has with the entire primary electorate.
-Romney's religion really doesn't look to be an issue for him. Only 18% of primary voters say they're uncomfortable with the thought of a Mormon President. Beyond that Romney is doing fine with Evangelicals, posting a 53/34 favorability rating with them and tying Gingrich at 25% for the lead with them while Santorum's just behind at 22%.
-Ron Paul's ability to be a serious factor in the Republican race probably ended after he failed to win Iowa. South Carolina Republicans hate him, giving him a 33/54 favorability rating.  That's pretty consistent with what we've seen for Paul among GOP voters most places. It seems possible that if Romney does indeed sweep New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida that it may just end up being him and Paul in the remaining contests. In a head to head Romney leads Paul 67-23...Paul's long term ability to compete with Romney is pretty limited.
-When PPP last polled South Carolina Perry was at 36%. Now he's at 5%.  Republican voters in the state don't even like him anymore. His favorability is under water with 42% expressing a favorable opinion of him to 43% with a negative one. A lot of folks have suggested to us that Perry can make a comeback in South Carolina because Santorum did in Iowa. Here's the difference though: even when Iowa Republicans weren't saying they would vote for Santorum, they still said they liked him. Two weeks out his favorability was 52/32, suggesting the possibility for people to shift to him. But South Carolina Republicans don't even like Perry.
-Nikki Haley and John McCain's endorsements are going to get a ton of credit if Romney wins in South Carolina...probably a lot more credit than they deserve.  11% say a McCain endorsement would make them more likely to vote for someone, but 30% say less likely.  14% say a Haley endorsement would make them more likely to vote for someone, but 25% say less likely. Their timing was good though and they'll get labeled as power brokers if Romney wins regardless of what the reality might be.
-Finally it's important to note how truly up in the air the South Carolina race is. 45% of voters are either undecided or open to changing their minds in the next two weeks. And when we asked folks who they thought had run the strongest campaign in the state 49% said they weren't sure, speaking to the fact that the campaign there really hasn't started yet. Romney's in the lead for now but a Gingrich or more likely Santorum surge certainly seems within the realm of possibility.

Mitt Romney Clinched The Republican Nomination

Michael Barone - At about 10:28pm tonight, as Mitt Romney pivoted from a question on tax loopholes and started in with, “the real issue is vision,” I had recorded this thought in my notes, “He just clinched the nomination.”
Romney said, as he often has, that Barack Obama has put America on the road to decline and is trying to make America more like Europe. He made reference to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as he often has—which helps to explain why he polls about as well with supporters of the tea party movement, who revered and often reference the Founding documents, as with non-supporters—and proclaimed that the question in this election was whether America was going to remain “a unique nation”and whether it would “return to the principles on which it was founded.” To which Newt Gingrich then meekly concurred, adding some caveats.
The only things following were an interchange between Jon Huntsman and Romney on how we should deal with China, in which Romney held his own and then, after the commercial break, the silly question about what you’d be doing on Saturday night if you weren’t running for president and debating.
Romney’s performance throughout showed discipline, preparation and also the ability to adapt to circumstances in a way that was superior to that of any other candidate. The only exception was his astonished reaction to George Stephanopoulos’s attempt to get the candidates to join Rick Santorum’s urge to relitigate the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case which, on ridiculously spurious constitutional grounds, overturned that state’s unenforced law (Massachusetts still had a similar one on the books) purporting to ban the sale of contraceptives. Stephanopoulos, who otherwise has made an almost Russert-like transition from partisan operative to fair-minded journalist, seemed to be trying to get the Republican candidates in trouble; the audience’s boos were an indication that many people were onto this (uncharacteristic, for him) partisan gameplaying.
Romney was prepared at the beginning to attack Barack Obama as a job-destroyer, to proclaim that he was not just a manager, as Rick Santorum claimed, but a leader, to come out with a claim (which I had not seen him make earlier) that his work in private equity created, net, 100,000 jobs. Perhaps that will be debunked by others, and you can quibble about whether he deserves credit for job growth in firms he created or helped run after they had been sold to others; but if it can be defended (as I suspect it can) it’s impressive: how many other private citizens have played key roles in creating 100,000 jobs? Romney mostly (I think entirely) avoided attacking other candidates and wasn’t on the receiving end of many attacks after he parried Rick Santorum’s attempt to dismiss him as a manager.
What else went on? Some of the candidates in the battle for second place in New Hampshire bloodied each other up in the first half of the debate. Newt Gingrich defended himself against Ron Paul’s charge that he was a chicken hawk at some length; Paul persisted in his claim, citing his own military service (without noting that the doctor draft law resulted in the draft of married men, unlike the general draft law: I know because it sent my father, a physician, to Korea in January 1953 at the age of 32 and with thre children).
Paul went after Santorum, as pro-Paul ads have, as a big government conservative and big spender who voted to raise the debt ceiling and worked for lobbyists after he involuntarily left the Senate. Santorum defended himself competently, but that consumed more of his air time than he surely liked. Paul was irritated that the questioners brought up his old newsletters and whether he would run as a third party candidate; he seemed to make it pretty clear that he wouldn’t. Rick Perry took a shot at Paul too, hoping to limit his upward potential or send his numbers downward.
Rick Santorum, having spoken at more than a dozen New Hampshire events since his virtual tie for first place in the Iowa caucuses, didn’t get a chance to speak at anything like that length. My sense is that he was far less able than Romney—less adroit in changing the subject perhaps—to pivot into presenting the positive case for his candidacy and was willing, as he so often is, to expatiate at length on issues which are peripheral to most voters and on which his views, while intellectually defensible, do not necessarily pitch him forward with voters.
Newt Gingrich didn’t show the angriness that he did on Iowa caucus night, which many have argued have helped propel his numbers downward. Many of his answers were fascinating—I didn’t know about the Northern Passage issue about whether (I’m guessing a bit here) high-tension lines sending electricity from Quebec Hydro from Canada to New Hampshire and the Boston area should be above or below ground—and he sketched out a grand vision on infrastructure (Romney basically said government has to keep bridges and roads in decent shape).
Jon Huntsman was given a chance to show his wares and did so with varying effectiveness. In the ridiculous interchange on contraception—there really is no reason for Stephanopoulos to have brought this forward than to hurt the Republican candidates—he notes wryly and with the further elaboration that none of us were seeking that he had seven children: good for him (and the Huntsman girls we’ve seen on the campaign trail do seem to be really intelligent and nice).
As for Rick Perry, he was as good as he has been in these debates and, his New Hampshire office having been shuttered this week, he aimed his comments straight at Republican voters in South Carolina, just as he shot that coyote that was threatening his dog. I have to say that if I had made that horrifying 53 second brain freeze I would be reluctant ever to appear in public again; give Perry credit for doing so readily, often, with good humor, and improving his game as he went forward. That says something significantly positive about him. He hit Ron Paul on earmarks, made the point that he has commanded 20,000 troops, took on what he called (with some justification, I think) the Obama administration’s war against religion and against religious service providers, called forthrightly for renegotiating with the Iraqi government and sending troops back into Iraq (though he didn’t state it in that order). When asked at the end where he’d be on Saturday night if he were not running, he said, “At the shooting range.” South Carolina, here we come.
Bottom line: Romney advanced his standing. Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and Huntsman probably didn’t. Perry kept himself in the race for South Carolina, where if none of those four guys exceed expectations (Huntsman’s metric) in New Hampshire he might turn out to be Romney’s most vocal if not most widely supported opponent.