Santorum ahead of Romney in Michigan: polls

Santorum moves ahead in Michigan

Rick Santorum’s taken a large lead in Michigan’s upcoming Republican primary. He’s at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.

Santorum’s rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum’s becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.

Santorum’s winning an outright majority of the Tea Party vote with 53% to 22% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich. He comes close to one with Evangelicals as well at 48% to 20% for Romney and 12% for Gingrich. And he cracks the 50% line with voters identifying as ‘very conservative’ at 51% to 20% for Romney and 10% for Gingrich.

Santorum’s benefiting from the open nature of Michigan’s primary as well. He’s only up by 12 points with actual Republican voters, but he has a 40-21 advantage with the Democrats and independents planning to vote that pushes his overall lead up to 15 points. Santorum is winning by a healthy margin in every region of the state except for Oakland County, where Romney has a 40-26 advantage, and the area around Lansing where Paul actually has an advantage at 30% to 27% for both Romney and Santorum.

Republican voters aren’t just declining to vote for Gingrich at this point- they don’t even like him anymore. Just 38% have a favorable opinion of him to 47% with a negative one. His numbers are inching back closer to what they were before his surge in the polls began in November. His continued presence in the race is a boost to Romney though. 54% of his supporters would go to Santorum if he dropped out, compared to only 21% for Romney and 14% for Paul. Santorum’s lead in a Newt-less field would expand to 21 points with him at 48% to 27% for Romney and 13% for Paul. So every day Gingrich stays in is a saving grace for Romney’s hopes.

Michigan is perceived as a state where Romney really has a home field advantage, but only 26% of primary voters actually consider him to be a Michigander while 62% do not. Only 39% have a favorable opinion of George Romney with a 46% plurality having no opinion about him. Romney really doesn’t have some great reservoir of goodwill in Michigan to fall back on. Only 49% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 39% with a negative one. That’s down a net 28 points from our last poll of Michigan in July when he was at +38 (61/23).

For all that, Santorum probably shouldn’t get too comfortable. There is a lot of potential for fluidity in the Michigan race, with only 47% of voters saying they’re strongly committed to their candidate while 53% are open to changing their minds in the next two weeks.

Santorum Ahead of Romney in Michigan Polls | DC

Romney’s Front-Runner Status at Risk From Surging Santorum | Democracy, elections, and voting at Democracy Chronicles