Early Polls Show Romney's Lead in South Carolina Shrinking

Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog writes that the first South Carolina GOP primary poll contradicts his earlier prediction that Mitt Romney would increase "his modest lead in the South Carolina polls once his victory in New Hampshire was reflected in the surveys there." Instead, the poll, an automated survey from InsiderAdvantage, "shows Mr. Romney’s lead contracting in South Carolina," though Silver "urge[s] a lot of caution in interpreting it."

The poll "was conducted on Wednesday and shows Mr. Romney with 23 percent of the vote, just 2 points ahead of Newt Gingrich at 21 percent. The poll has Rick Santorum and Ron Paul tied for third place at 13 percent, with Jon M. Huntsman Jr. having moved ahead of Rick Perry for fifth place."

But Silver is not completely sold on InsiderAdvantage. He writes, "InsiderAdvantage has a mixed track record and rates fairly poorly in the FiveThrityEight pollster ratings, which is one reason to interpret these numbers with some care. In addition, Matt Towery, the head of InsiderAdvantage, formerly served as the head of Mr. Gingrich’s political organization from 1992 until Mr. Gingrich left Congress."

Silver does note, however, that "another polling firm that rates more highly, Public Policy Polling, said in a series of Twitter messages that it has also detected a tight race between Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich in South Carolina, with little evidence of favorable momentum for Mr. Romney following his New Hampshire victory."

Negative early news for Romney in South Carolina is partially offset by early polling in Florida, however. Silver writes: "Confusing matters further is that a poll of Florida, from Rasmussen Reports, did show some gains for Mr. Romney. The poll, conducted on Wednesday, showed Mr. Romney with 41 percent of the vote there, better than he has done in any prior survey of the state. The poll also showed Mr. Gingrich’s numbers on the decline." Silver predicts that "if the initial results from South Carolina and Florida are confirmed by other pollsters, they would suggest that Florida could play a backstop role for Mr. Romney, in somewhat the same way that New Hampshire did for him relative to Iowa."

However, at this stage Silver suggests that we wait before attaching much weight to the early poll results from either South Carolina or Florida. 

FiveThirtyEight: Gingrich Leads Five Plausible GOP Candidates in Iowa

In a recent FiveThirtyEight blog post, Nate Silver shared a preview of his polling-based forecasts for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the official versions of which he plans to release in a few days. The statistical analysis is based on state-by-state polling; Silver writes that although more objective and subjective factors could be taken into account, "building a well-calibrated forecast from the polls is challenging enough given the uncertainties inherent in primary polling, and so that’s what we’ve decided to focus on rather than anything fancier."

The polling-based analysis for Iowa has Newt Gingrich projected to win 25.1% of the vote, followed by Ron Paul, with 20.7%; Mitt Romney (15.6%); Rick Perry (12.3%); and Michele Bachmann (11.4%); and both Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman Jr., who are projected to garner under 10 percent of the vote. In his blog post, Silver explains the three factors used to calculate the projections: a weighted polling average, which emphasizes more recent polling as being a better predictor of probable primary results; the reallocated average, "which takes undecided voters and allocates them among the viable candidates;" and a process Silver calls momentum, which "looks at the near-term trend in a candidate’s polling and assigns a small bonus or penalty based upon it."

Silver warns, however, that these projections "are not very precise, because primary polling is not very precise." He tries to quantify this uncertainty, providing both confidence intervals for each candidate's projections and their win probability, "which combines the vote projections and the uncertainty together to estimate how likely each candidate is to win the caucuses." Gingrich leads with an estimated 49.6% probability, followed by Paul, with 28.2%; Romney (10.6%); Perry (5.2%); and Bachmann (4.1%).

According to Silver's analysis, "Although Mr. Gingrich still has the lead, Iowa looks to be fairly wide open with as many as five plausible winners.

Gingrich Joins Romney at Top of GOP Race

Gallup reported on recent polling data that shows Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as the top choices among Republicans for their party's 2012 presidential nominee. 20% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say Romney is their top choice, while 19% say they would most likely support Gingrich; Herman Cain comes in at third with 16%. Among Republicans and Republican-leaners who are currently registered voters, however, Gingrich jumps into first place with 22%, followed closely by Romney (21%) and Cain (16%).

The USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Nov. 13-17, close to two weeks after a similar Nov. 3-6 poll. In that short time, Gingrich's support has increased from 12% to its current figure of 19% among Republicans nationwide. During this same time, Cain appears to have lost support--perhaps the result of recent allegations of sexual harassment levied against him. While 21% of Republicans supported him in the Nov. 3-6 poll, a smaller 16% favor him today. Rick Perry also continued to slip, from 11% in the last poll to 8% in this most recent one.

While most candidates appear to receive roughly equal support from conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans and Republican-leaners, Gingrich and Cain seem to hang their hat on the more conservative wing of Republican voters. Conservative Republicans and Republican-leaders are most likely to favor Gingrich (23%), followed by Romney (20%) and Cain (18%). But among moderate/liberal Republicans and Republican-leaners, Romney leads the race, checking in with 20% of the votes, while Gingrich and Cain each only garner 12% of the group's vote. According to Gallup, however, "conservatives outnumber moderates and liberals by better than 2-to-1 in the Republican rank-and-file." Gallup writes: "Gingrich and Cain appear to have benefited most from the decline in Perry's support."

Age appears to be a fairly large determinant of respondents' preferences. The GOP race would be a two-man battle between Gingrich (34%) and Romney (28%) if it were up to voters over 65 years of age. In fact, "Gingrich's support is heavily concentrated among Republicans who are at least 50." Part of this, Gallup surmises, may be due to the fact that Gingrich "has been out of public office for more than a decade, and [is] thus a less familiar figure to younger Republicans." Cain and Ron Paul, on the other hand, get most of their support from younger respondents. This would appear to favor Gingrich and Romney, as older Americans are typically more likely to head to the polls than younger Americans.

Gallup concludes: "With the first official nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, now just six weeks away, there is no clear national front-runner for the Republican nomination...the current contest stands to be the most competitive and perhaps most unpredictable for the Republican nomination since 1972, when the parties shifted the power to choose their presidential nominees away from party leaders at the national convention to the rank-and-file voters in state primaries and caucuses."

Down Huckabee, Race for GOP Presidential Nomination Without a Clear Leader

According to Gallup, following Mike Huckabee's decision to withdraw his name from consideration, the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination lacks a clear leader. A March-April 2011 trial heat ballot among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, adjusting for the withdrawals of Huckabee and Donald Trump, suggests the lead is shared by three politicians: Mitt Romney (20%), Sarah Palin (18%), and Newt Gingrich (11%).
But current voter preferences are based more in recognition than anything else. Those three politicians also lead potential GOP candidates in name recognition among the polled population, with 96% recognizing Palin; 84% Gingrich; and 83% of those polled recognizing Romney. Writes Gallup: "The most well-known candidates lead in nomination support at this point, while those who are not as well-known lag behind."

Evidence for this view--that recent, post-Huckabee trial ballot results can be attributed primarily to candidate recognition and not real, strongly rooted voter preference--was found not only in the three most well-known candidates leading the results, but also from the relatively low level of excitement voters expressed for those three candidates. Positive Intensity scores, meant to measure the intensity of a voter's support for his/her candidate, showed that voters are less excited about these three potential candidates than they had been about Huckabee. While Palin scored only 16, Romney 14, and Gingrich 13, Huckabee's final Positive Intensity score for May 2-15 polling reached 25. The Positive Intensity score is calculated by taking the percentage of voters who recognize and have a strongly favorable opinion of a candidate and subtracting from that the percentage of voters who recognize and have a strongly unfavorable opinion of the candidate.Among those candidates who registered lower name recognition, Herman Cain (29% recognition) and Michele Bachmann (21%) received the highest Positive Intensity scores with 24 and 21, respectively. For those two and others "in the Republican field beyond Palin, Gingrich, and Romney," the greatest challenge "right now is increasing their name recognition." For Palin, Gingrich and Romney, the goal must be to increase their Positive Intensity scores among voters, assuming all three participate--or remain--in the race.According to Gallup, only one thing is clear following Huckabee's departure: "There is no clear front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination."

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