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Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
Rick Santorum
would win Ohio if GOP primary were today, poll shows
WASHINGTON -- Former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum’s popularity
surge has extended to Ohio, where he now is favored among likely
Republican voters to win the state’s GOP primary, a new poll shows.
But the latest Quinnipiac Poll, noting the ups and downs of Santorum,
Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and others, comes with caution.
“Unclear is whether that momentum fizzles as happened to Santorum in
New Hampshire after winning Iowa, and as happened to Gov. Mitt Romney
in South Carolina after winning New Hampshire and Speaker Newt Gingrich
in Florida after taking South Carolina,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant
director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Santorum, Brown says, appears to be riding the momentum gained from
last week’s victories in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri.
If Ohio’s March 6 primary were held today, here is how the GOP
presidential contenders would finish, according to Quinnipiac’s
telephone poll of 553 registered Republicans:
Santorum: 36 percent.
Romney: 29 percent.
Gingrich: 20 percent.
Ron Paul: 9 percent.
There are three weeks until Ohio’s primary, and half of likely
Republican voters told the pollsters they still might change their
minds.
One of the more interesting findings came when voters were asked if
each candidate was conservative enough or about right.
Forty-eight percent of Republicans said Romney was not conservative
enough, while 41 percent said he was about right. But 74 percent of
Republicans said Santorum’s conservatism was about right, and only 7
percent said he was not conservative enough.
In a potential November matchup, the numbers tell a different story,
although that race is much further away and harder to predict.
President Barack Obama would beat Santorum, 47-41 percent, while Romney
would run nearly neck-and-neck with Obama, with the incumbent
Democratic president only 2 points ahead, a statistical tie. This is
based on a broader sample of 1,421 voters and includes Democrats and
independents.
Other items of note from the poll:
* It would not necessarily help a Republican candidate to pick
home-state Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman as a running mate. That
comes with a caveat: The question was asked about a potential matchup
involving Romney as the front-runner (an Obama-Biden versus
Romney-Portman race).
“At least in this survey, the inclusion of Rob Portman as vice
president does not appear to help the GOP ticket,” said Brown.
* Quinnipiac also polled on the November race for U.S. Senate, which is
likely to have Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican, facing
incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Brown still leads in that
matchup, 48-35 percent.
An independent, automated poll last week by Rasmussen Reports put the
Brown-Mandel race much closer, with Brown ahead by only 4 points, 44-40
percent. That was within the poll’s 4.5 percent margin of error.
A Rasmussen poll last week also showed Santorum dead even with Obama in
Ohio. Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s leader, told The Plain Dealer that
the result reflected the quickly changing nature of the Republican
primary race and would likely change again. Rasmussen polled 500 likely
Ohio voters.
Read this and other articles at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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