Mike Huckabee,  Mitt Romney,  Polling,  President 2012

President 2012 Poll Watch: Mike Huckabee UP and Mitt Romney NOT So Much

April 2, 2011 /

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who both ran for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2008

Compared to the race for the Presidency, 2008.

On Monday we’ll release numbers on the Republican primary for President in Florida. This is a state where it’s generally assumed that Mitt Romney is the favorite, because he did pretty well there in 2008. A deeper look comparing how Romney did in various states in 2008 to how he’s polling now though suggests that’s a flawed assumption.

Over the course of the last five months PPP has polled Republican voters in 16 different states that had primaries or caucuses while Romney was still in the race for President in 2008. Comparing the support Romney received then to the support he has now does not present a pretty picture for his chances at winning the nomination. On average he is doing 14 points worse than he did in his first campaign. These numbers suggest that little of the support he received in 2008 was ‘hard’ and that with a different field of candidates he could have difficulty getting the same people who voted for him the first time around to do it again.

Here are Romney’s poll numbers:

  • Romney’s support has declined from his 2008 share of the vote in 14 out of 16 states.
  • Romney improved in two early states: New Hampshire and South Carolina.
  • Romney’s drop is more severe in caucus states but if you discard the caucus states of Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Colorado and Minnesota Romney still has an average drop of 8.5 points in 11 primary states.

Mike Huckabee though is doing better and here are his numbers:

Mike Huckabee unlike Mitt Romney has had support rise since 2008. Maybe Huck should consider running since he had been leading the polls for quite a while now and he has done little or no campaigning.

  • Huckabee is doing better in 11 of the 16 polled states except the early states of Iowa and South Carolina. Huckabee is polling less in Minnesota, Tennessee and Missouri.
  • There is no difference between caucus and primary election states like Romney.

So, what does this mean?

Simply put, Mitt Romney has been losing support since 2008 and Mike Huckabee has been gaining it.

However, there may be a difference in the polling between now and in 2008 with more candidates to dilute votes away from Romney and Huckabee in 2012 than in 2008. Nevertheless, Huckabee is doing better than Romney before either candidate has formally announced.