Perry still dominating national primary, up 13 on Romney
Raleigh, N.C. – Despite his slippage with general-election voters against President
Obama, Rick Perry has maintained his lead over Mitt Romney and company in the race
for the right to face the president. In PPP’s newest national primary poll, Perry now has
31% to Romney’s 18%, Ron Paul’s 11%, Newt Gingrich’s 10%, Michele Bachmann’s
9%, Herman Cain’s 8%, and Rick Santorum’s and Jon Huntsman’s 2%. In August, Perry
led by an identical 13-point spread, 33-20. At 16% then, Bachmann continues to tumble
from contention not long after winning the Ames Straw Poll. Paul is up five points and
Gingrich and Cain each two, while Santorum has fallen two points and Huntsman one.
Perry has only upped his lead with the most conservative voters, who make up a third of
the electorate. He topped Romney 40-14 in August, and 39-9 now, with Romney in sixth
place. Romney has made up a little ground with the others, trailing by 11 with the
“somewhat conservative” plurality and leading by 15 with moderates.
If the race were to come down to only Perry and Romney, the Texan would prevail, 49-
37. That is down a tad from Perry’s 52-36 lead three weeks ago. Perry leads almost 3:1
with right-wingers, but only by eight points with the center-right, and trails by 19 with
centrists.
Yesterday’s release showed that only 20% of all voters agree with Perry that Social
Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” and still only a third of these voters do. With them, Perry
holds a huge 40-15 lead in the multi-candidate field, and 64-26 head-to-head. With the
53% who disagree, Perry leads Romney only 24-23.
“Perry’s momentum has finally stopped,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. “He was gaining more and more support with every new poll and that is not the
case with this one. But he’s in a very good position- the big question now is whether he
can hold onto it.”
PPP surveyed 500 usual Republican primary voters nationally from September 8th to 11th.
The margin of error for the entire survey is +/-4.4%. This poll was not paid for or
authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through
automated telephone interviews. PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling
expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually
exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates.
publicpolicypolling.com |
