Is It Down To Gingrich Or Romney ?

It's only been a few days since Herman Cain suspended his presidential campaign, but the media is all abuzz over who he will endorse for the nomination. One Atlanta-based TV organization put out the story that Cain would be endorsing yesterday, but that proved to be just a rumor. Personally, I doubt that any voters really care who Cain endorses. After all, if endorsements really mattered then Romney would have the nomination all wrapped up, since he has amassed a ton of them.

But while it doesn't matter who Cain eventually endorses or doesn't endorse, his dropping out of the race does have an effect on the race (as least for the short term). A couple of days ago, I said I thought Cain dropping out would benefit Newt Gingrich more than any other candidate and the latest poll, the only one taken after Cain dropped out, seems to confirm that.

It was a survey by Poll Position, and it was done on December 4th of 502 nationwide Republican voters (with a margin of error of  4 points). The poll showed that Gingrich had gained 5 points in this same poll since last week, while Romney has remained at the same level. Here is how the poll came out:


Newt Gingrich...............37%
Mitt Romney...............23%
Ron Paul...............7%
Michele Bachmann...............6%
Rick Perry...............3%
Jon Huntsman...............2%
Rick Santorum...............2%
Someone else...............4%
No opinion...............15%

An oddity of the poll is that when you look at the crosstabs (demographic data), Gingrich's strongest support comes from older voters (who should remember his ethical problems) and he gets no support from young voters (who are too young to remember the ethical problems). I would have thought it would have been just the opposite. Here is how the support for Romney and Gingrich broke down by age:

18 TO 29
Gingrich...............0%
Romney...............66.7%

30 TO 44
Gingrich...............37.2%
Romney...............20%

45 TO 64
Gingrich...............41.4%
Romney...............15.4%

OVER 65
Gingrich...............45.3%
Romney...............19.3%

This Poll Position survey would seem to indicate that the Republican presidential race has been narrowed to two candidate -- Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. All the other candidates trail far behind with less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses. Things could still change since politics is a strange game, but time is running out. Also, there is a second poll which shows it could well have become a two-man race.

The Gallup Poll (conducted November 28th through December 1st of 1,012 random adults nationwide, with a margin of error of 4 points), asked a very interesting question. Instead of asking Republicans who they would vote for, they asked them who they could accept as a candidate for their party. And it turned out that only two candidates were acceptable to a majority of Republicans. Here are the percentages who would find each candidate acceptable:

Newt Gingrich...............62%
Mitt Romney...............54%
Rick Perry...............41%
Michele Bachmann...............37%
Herman Cain...............37%
Ron Paul...............34%
Jon Huntsman...............28%
Rick Santorum...............27%

Even when you consider the poll's margin of error, only Romney and Gingrich win approval of a majority of Republicans. I don't know about the rest of you people, but I'm starting to get a little excited. It looks like the Republicans could actually nominate Newt Gingrich!