Scott Rasmussen’s polls numbers out of Florida show Mitt Romney with a double digit lead over Newt Gingrich — a big swing from just a week ago:
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Republican Primary Voters, conducted Saturday, shows Romney up by 16 points with 44% support. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a distant second at 28%.
These figures reflect a significant turnaround over the past week. Last Sunday, just after his big win in the South Carolina Primary, Gingrich led Romney by nine. By the middle of this past week, Romney was back in control with an eight-point advantage. Despite all the ups and downs, the results today are very similar to polling results found in Florida three weeks ago, coming off Romney’s decisive victory in the New Hampshire Primary.
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum earns 12% support, while Texas Congressman Ron Paul picks up 10%. One percent (1%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.
Whether these results will hold through Tuesday is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that Mr. Gingrich intends to fight all the way through to the August convention. If he does so, he could arrive in Tampa with a sizable number of delegates (Santorum and Paul may as well, if both men remain in the race). Or even enough to win. For political junkies, this is the contest that just keeps on giving.
But Scott has another bit which may help explain why Newt’s checkered personal past may not be much, if any, liability in the contests to come. Scott says it’s a law of politics that we tend to grade politicians on a curve when it comes to ethics. On that scale, Mr. Gingrich is neither worse nor better than his peers.
In other words, Caeser’s wife can relax.
