Rick Santorum spent much of 2011 as an electoral afterthought, struggling to compete in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He enjoyed a brief surge in support in early January, when the former senator managed to eke out a win in the Iowa caucuses, but it soon subsided.
The GOP race has, however, changed quite a bit over the last 10 days. As hard as it may be to believe, a Public Policy Polling survey released over the weekend showed Santorum not only leading the Republican field, but ahead by a double-digit margin.
Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP’s newest national poll. He’s at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul.
Part of the reason for Santorum’s surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney’s favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31).
In a hypothetical one-on-one race, PPP shows Santorum leading Romney 50% to 28%. Obviously, when the ostensible frontrunner is trailing this badly in mid-February, there’s a problem.
The latest Gallup tracking poll still shows Romney ahead, but his lead over Santorum has shrunk from 20 to 7 points since the beginning of the month. Indeed, Santorum’s support hasn’t been this high in a Gallup poll since the race began. (In this image, Romney is the gray line, Santorum is the dark green line, and Gingrich is the orange line.)









