Two New Polls Verify Perry/Bachmann Drop

Just before last night's Republican presidential debate a couple of new polls were released that verified what some other polls have shown the last few days. It looks like the fall from grace of candidates Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann is for real.

The polls are a Gallup Poll (taken between October 3rd and 7th of 1,064 national Republicans with a 4 point margin of error) and a Bloomberg-Washington Post Poll (taken between October 6th and 9th of 361 Republicans with a 6 point margin of error). Both polls showed Romney in the lead and Cain having jumped in front of Perry, Bachmann, and Paul. Here are the polls:

GALLUP POLL (with last month's results in parentheses)
Mitt Romney...............20% (24%)
Herman Cain...............18% (5%)
Rick Perry...............15% (31%)
Ron Paul...............8% (13%)
Newt Gingrich...............7% (5%)
Michele Bachmann...............5% (5%)
Rick Santorum...............3% (2%)
Jon Huntsman...............2% (1%)
Undecided...............20% (10%)

BLOOMBERG-WASHINGTON POST POLL
Mitt Romney...............24%
Herman Cain...............16%
Rick Perry...............13%
Ron Paul...............6%
Michele Bachmann...............4%
Newt Gingrich...............3%
Rick Santorum...............1%
John Huntsman...............*
None of these...............3%
Don't know...............27%

The only thing these polls really show is that the Republicans are still searching for a candidate they can believe in. Mitt Romney is once again in the lead but it is a very slim lead, and "undecided" and "don't know" are polling as well as he is. This is still a wide open race that is waiting for a candidate to catch fire (or a new candidate to enter the race).

And it's not just Republicans who are yet to get excited about any of these Republican candidates. A recent Pew Research survey asked Americans to name at least one Republican candidate, and only 54% of the general public was able to name a single Republican candidate. About 46% could not do that. According to Pew, this is a much lower percentage that at this time in past campaigns. This should be troubling not only to the candidates, but to the Republican Party in general.