Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Romney still ahead in New Hampshire (2012) -- July 2010

No surprises here:

Romney: 31%
Gingrich: 14%
Paul: 13%
Huckabee: 12%
Palin: 9%
Pawlenty: 3%
Daniels: 1%

Someone else: 5%
Undecided: 11%

Sample: 415 Republican voters
Margin of Error: +/- 4.81%
Conducted: July 23-25, 2010

I won't dwell on these results. More than anything, they simply maintain the status quo: Romney looks good in New Hampshire. Ho hum. However, I will add one note of caution. This was a survey of Republican voters in the Granite state. It does not in any way account for the mass of independents that will surely participate in the Republican primary with Democrats idle in 2012. The argument could be made that Romney would benefit even more from the inclusion of independents. Yet, New Hampshire primary voters have been known to be, oh, I don't want to say quirky, but willing to take a flyer on someone other than the frontrunner. While there is no definitive frontrunner for the Republican nomination at this point, Romney is the New Hampshire frontrunner and that gains him some points in laying claim to that tag at the national level.

Speaking of Romney, FHQ will have an update -- with graphics -- of his trial heat numbers against Obama later today.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you really trust PPP? This bunch put out a poll on the NH Senate race and said Palin's endorsement hurt Ayotte. Turns out the difference was the latest poll sampled more Democrats and liberals. That is dishonest polling. Plus they were only around 225% off on the margin of the Perry-Hutchinson race.

Josh Putnam said...

You forgot that PPP conducts robo-call polls as well.

I have no reason not to trust PPP. They have done what good pollsters should:

1) managed to irritate both Democrats and Republicans with their results (They've got to be doing something right.),

2) have been much more transparent with their numbers than many other polling outlets,

3) have been upfront about the fact that those that behind the scenes there are Democrats (and have still managed #1),

4) have been accurate more often than not (no pollster hits the mark on every survey).

There is an understandable level of mistrust of pollsters these days after what happened with both Strategic Vision and Research 2000, but until there is evidence that PPP has actually cooked the books against Palin or Republicans more generally, I don't have a problem with them.

That said, I'm just reporting the numbers -- early though they may be -- on the state of the race in 2012. If I was going to mistrust the results PPP or any other pollster has put out for 2012, it would be because of timing, not poor survey design.