Is Romney Really The Favorite ?

There are those in the Republican establishment that are terrified that one of the teabagger candidates might get the GOP presidential nomination and hurt candidates all the way down the ballot. These are the people that are trying to convince anyone who will listen that Mitt Romney, who is boring but probably not toxic down-ballot, is the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination. But is this really true?

A new Gallup Poll (taken between July 20th and July 24th of 1,088 randomly selected Republican voters, with a 4 point margin of error) shows that this may not be true at all. There is at least one area of the country where Romney is not in the lead, and two others where his lead is small. It is only in the West where he is clearly the favorite. Here are how the candidates fare in the different regions of the country:

EAST
Romney..........19%
Giuliani..........18%
Perry..........13%
Palin..........13%
Bachmann..........12%

SOUTH
Perry..........22%
Palin..........13%
Romney..........12%
Bachmann..........10%
Paul..........9%

MIDWEST
Romney..........17%
Bachmann..........11%
Perry..........10%
Palin..........10%
Giuliani..........9%

WEST
Romney..........24%
Bachmann..........12%
Palin..........11%
Giuliani..........11%
Paul..........10%
Perry..........10%

Those don't look like the numbers of a prohibitive favorite to me. It looks like this is still a wide-open race and could easily be won by a teabagger candidate like Bachmann, Perry, or Palin -- especially if no candidate gets a majority before the GOP convention.