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. 

Mormon Republicans Loyal to Romney; Atheist Republicans Disproportionately Go For Paul

According to Gallup, Republican and Republican-leaners of voting age who identify as Mormon are disproportionately likely to support Mitt Romney, while Ron Paul garners more support among atheist Republicans than he does among Republicans of all religious denominations. Romney collects 71 percent of the Mormon Republican vote, exceeding the 23 percent he scores among all Republicans, and Paul garners 19 percent of the atheist vote, more than the 10 percent of all Republicans who support him. Gallup surmises that Paul's support among atheist Republicans at least partly reflects "the youthful skew in Paul's support and the tendency for young Americans to have no formal religious identity."

But Republican voters do not always support the candidate who shares their religious denomination: "Catholic Republicans were no more likely than average to support the two Catholics in the GOP race, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum; Protestant Republicans did not disproportionately support any particular candidate." 26 percent of Republicans who identify as Catholic support Gingrich, less than the 28 percent of all Republicans who support him. And four percent support Santorum, only slightly more than the three percent of all Republicans who support him.

Similar to Catholic Republicans, Protestant Republicans "reflect the overall sample average in their candidate support." The three major Protestant candidates are Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann (who has just suspended her campaign). Paul only gets 10 percent of the Protestant vote, which matches his score among all Republicans; Perry gets eight percent of the Protestant vote, only one more percentage point than his support among all Republicans; and Bachmann scores seven percent of the Protestant vote, just surpassing the six percent of all Republicans who support her.

Although Romney attracts the vast majority of the Mormon Republican vote, Mormons represent a relatively small percentage of the voting population. Gallup writes: "Given that Mormons constitute about 2% of American adults and 4% of Republicans nationally, the more important factor may be any possible effect that Romney's faith has on the vote of highly religious non-Mormons, a much larger voting bloc. The current data show that highly religious Protestants do give Romney slightly lower support than he gets among all Republicans, although the five-point difference is not huge."

One-Word Reactions To GOP Candidates Favor Herman Cain; Perry Draws the Most Ire

A recent survey that asked Americans to describe leading GOP leaders "in a single word" found that Herman Cain was viewed in the most favorable terms. Americans most frequently associated Cain with his proposed "9-9-9" tax plan, followed by his ties to business and 23 respondents who found him "interesting." Romney was most closely associated with his religion, Mormonism, and his work on health care, and Rick Perry was most often identified with his home state of Texas.

While nearly as many (12%) respondents used positive words as negative words (14%) to describe Cain, a higher percentage of respondents used negative words and not positive ones to describe both Romney (21% versus 11%) and Perry (25% versus 6%). But while the negative continued to outweigh the positive for Perry when the respondent group was limited to Republicans and GOP-leaners, with 19% using a negative word and only 9% a positive one, both Cain and Romney received more positive than negative feedback among their party's political base. Still, the support for Romney (18% positive versus 15% negative) was less impressive than that for Cain (22% versus 5%).In addition, the survey found that "many Americans are unable to come up with words to describe the three GOP candidates. Nearly half (46%) did not offer a one-word description of Cain, 44% did not offer a word to describe Perry and 37% did not have a one-word description of Romney." The survey was conducted by the Pew People & the Press and The Washington Post from October 13-16; its respondent population was 1,007 adults.

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Support for Death Penalty Down from Last Year, but a Majority Still Favors its Use

A recent Gallup poll shows that 61 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder; another 52 percent believe the dealth penalty is applied fairly through the country's criminal justice system. The approval rate represents a three percent decline from last year, when 64 percent of Americans were in favor of the penalty. According to Gallup, this year's mark indicates "the lowest level of support since 1972, the year the Supreme Court voided all existing state death penalty laws in Furman v. Georgia."

Gallup writes that views on the death penalty in murder cases have "varied substantially" over time. In 1936, the first year Gallup began asking respondents about the death penalty, "59% of Americans supported it and 38% opposed it." This was followed by "a period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s when less than a majority of Americans favored it." And "support climbed to its highest levels from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, including the all-time high of 80% who favored the death penalty in 1994."

The 52 percent who say they believe the penalty is applied fairly also represents a decline from last year, when the figure stood six points higher, at 58 percent. Additionally, 40 percent of Americans state the dealth penalty is not used enough, "the lowest such percentage since May 2001, when Gallup first asked this question." Further, "twenty-five percent say the death penalty is used too often, the highest such percentage yet that Gallup has measured."

Americans view the death penalty issue along strongly partisan lines. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents approve of the practice, as compared with 46% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Gallup writes: "Additionally, men, whites, and those living in the South and Midwest are among those most likely to support the death penalty."
Gallup conducted the poll following the controversial execution of Troy Davis, who was put to death in Georgia this past September. Politicians' stances on the death penalty may play a role in the upcoming presidential race; at a recent GOP debate, Governor Rick Perry was asked about his views on the practice--and how it is applied in his home state.

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