Grassfire Nation Tea Party Polling Overwhelmingly Favors Newt Gingrich

By Susan Duclos

Via email link to Liberty News, we see that polling conducted from January 23-25, 2012 puts Newt Gingrich at the top of their favorite list with nearly a two-to-one lead over their second choice, Rick Santorum.

The survey was taken by 29,000 members and hit on a number of questions related to the 2012 GOP primary election. Of the 29,000, 75.7% of respondents said they closely identify with the ideals of the movement, and 17.2% said they are actively a part of the tea party movement.

The margin of error is at 0.56% with 95% confidence for the Grassfire Nation audience. First let’s take a look at the national results. We’ll follow up with some points about the numbers.

Question #1: If the caucus or primary were held in your state today, which of the following Republican presidential candidates would you support?

1. Newt Gingrich – 48.2%
2. Rick Santorum – 24.6%
3. Mitt Romney – 14.8%
4. Ron Paul – 12.4%

Read the rest.

This is confirmed by a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday which revealed that evangelicals and Tea Party supporters favor Newt Gingrich in Florida, putting the former House Speaker within two points of Mitt Romney.

A press release describing the poll states Gingrich "leads among white evangelical Christians 43 - 30 percent and among those who consider themselves to be tea party supporters 43 - 28 percent." Each segment makes up roughly a third of primary voters, according to Quinnipiac pollsters, "although there is substantial overlap among those two groups."

This comes six days after a report showing that 100 Tea Party leaders, from 25 different states, stepped up to support Gingrich.

Two recent Florida polls have come out today showing that after overcoming Romney's lead in Florida and taking the lead himself, Gingrich has lost that edge and Romney has once again taken the polling lead.

The fluctuations in Florida polls over the last week alone, show a race that is unpredictable and could go to either candidate by Tuesday, January 31, 2012, which is primary day in Florida.

The RCP average for nationwide polling, as of this moment, has Gingrich up by one percent, showing a very close race. That average changes with every new national polling data that is added.

Click to enlarge- RCP Screen shot taken on 1/26/12

As South Carolina clearly evidenced with Romney leading Gingrich by double digits on a Tuesday and Gingrich overcoming that lead and winning the South Carolina primaries by 12 percentage points by that same Saturday, polling is a snapshot and dependent on the mood of the moment which can turn on a dime and many not making up their minds who to vote for until primary day.

An example is provided by the FiveThirtyEight forecast yesterday where they gave Newt Gingrich a 60 percent chance of taking Florida on Tuesday the 31st, with the caveat pointing to the fact that even that lead was diminished from just two days before.

Further mucking up of the GOP primary process in Florida is that not only are campaigns running negative ads against each other along with SuperPACS that are pro-one candidate or another, but also now liberal groups have jumped into the ad war against Romney, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest public employee union and Service Employees International Union and Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC, have also jointly launched a Spanish-language radio campaign in Florida accusing Romney of having “two faces” on immigration issues.

Tonight's debate sponsored by CNN, CNN en Español, The Hispanic Leadership Network and The Republican Party of Florida, at 8pm ET on CNN, just became of prime importance for the vote of the ten percent still undecided and the third of voters saying they could still change their minds.

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