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Rick Perry’s image is suffering, with his Positive Intensity Score among Republicans familiar with him down to 15, and below 20 for the first time. Meanwhile, Herman Cain’s score is now 30, the highest for any candidate this year.

The results are based on Gallup Daily tracking from Sept. 19-Oct. 2. Gallup calculates candidate Positive Intensity Scores as the percentage of strongly favorable opinions minus the percentage of strongly unfavorable opinions of each candidate among Republicans and Republican leaners familiar with the candidate.

The movement in Perry’s and Cain’s scores follows recent campaign developments, including poor reviews of Perry’s performance in the September debates and Cain’s surprising win in the Sept. 24 Florida straw poll.

In addition to Perry, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul established new low Positive Intensity Scores this week, at 5 and 3, respectively. Bachmann was among the highest-rated candidates in June, peaking at 24, but has seen a steady decline since she posted a score of 20 in Aug. 1-14 tracking. Paul has not been rated as positively, with a high of 16 in May, and has registered in the single digits in all but one update since late May.

The graph says it all.

Mitt Romney has regained front-runner status.

Herman Cain did well in last week’s GOP debate and won a decisive straw poll victory in Florida, but his numbers in a general election match-up against President Obama are little changed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that Obama earns 39% support while Cain attracts 34%. In that match-up, 14% prefer some other candidate, and 14% are undecided

A month ago,  the president led Cain by seven percentage points. In March  Obama held an 18 point advantage over the businessman and talk show host.

Data released earlier today shows that voters nationwide are evenly divided as to whether or not Cain is qualified to be president  — 30% say yes, 33% no, and 37% are not sure. Republicans, by a 49% to 17% margin believe he is qualified while most Democrats disagree. Among Republicans, Cain’s numbers on this question are similar to Rick Perry’s but not as strong as Mitt Romney’s.

Yet, these are fairly decent numbers from someone who is virtually unknown to the electorate.

Here is a summary of Rasmussen head to head polling:

Not a bad polling result from someone who just last week was considering withdrawal form the Presidential race.

Herman Cain’s image among Republicans familiar with him is more intensely positive than any other Republican presidential candidate’s, but his 51% name recognition continues to rank near the bottom of the field. Among the better-known candidates, Rick Perry has the strongest positive image.

Cain is attracting increased media attention after pulling off an upset in the Florida straw poll on Saturday. Much of the interviewing in the latest data, spanning Sept. 12-25 Gallup Daily tracking, was conducted before that win. However, Cain has consistently ranked near the top of Gallup’s positive intensity list this year. His current score of 26 is just below the 28 he registered on two occasions, which is the highest Gallup has measured for any GOP candidate.

Cain’s popularity is largely due to the fact that Cain has concrete proposals (e.g. his 9-9-9 plan) and is able to articulate them well. And, he is not a typical POL.

But, he is an outsider in an inside game and will not be able to put together the money nor the organization to help him win elections.

Cain’s win in Florida may not be surprising in that he has always had a relatively small but intense following among Republicans, the kind of group that can propel a candidate to win a straw poll vote. His win may make him the new “flavor of the month” in the GOP nomination contest, which was the case for Bachmann in June after the first major candidate debate and for Perry in August after he officially announced his candidacy.

That status is not necessarily welcome news, though, as increased attention begets increased scrutiny, which can lead to increasingly negative views of the candidate. For example, Bachmann’s current Positive Intensity Score of 8 is one-third as large as her score of 24 in late June. And though Perry remains among the most-liked candidates among those familiar with him, his score is beginning to show some signs of decline as his opponents have made his record and past statements a central theme of the campaign in recent weeks.

Even if Cain is able to weather increased scrutiny, he does have to convince voters that he is both electable and capable of being president, given his lack of political experience. However, with Americans expressing a low level of trust in government and the people who hold political office, they may view a lack of political experience as more of a plus than a minus.

Former pizza executive Herman Cain surprised rival Rick Perry with an upset victory on Saturday in a nonbinding Republican presidential straw poll in Florida, dealing a disappointing loss to the Texas governor two days after a shaky debate performance.

Perry, leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, had needed a victory in the key test of strength in a crucial state to salve the wounds left over from a debate with his rivals on Thursday in which he struggled.

Instead, former Godfather’s Pizza executive Cain, who is far behind the two top-tier candidates Perry and Mitt Romney, won with 37 percent of 2,657 votes cast.

Perry was a distant second at 15 percent, just ahead of Romney, who won 14 percent despite not participating in the poll. Further back were Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann.

Neither Mitt Romney nor Michele Bachmann competed in the straw poll, but Perry did.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that while Rick Perry is the current front-runner in GOP Polls that when the new polls come out, he will have shown a drop. Perry’s debate performacne was booed by the Florida Republican audience and his campaign has taken severe hits over Perry’s statements and/or record on Social Security, mandated Gardasil vaccinations and illegal immigration.

Next week’s polls should give us an indication whether Perry is another GOP flavor of the month front-runner or whether he remains a favorite in the Presidential field.

But, losing head to head against Herman Cain cannot be viewed as a positive development in Rick Perry’s campaign.

Herman Cain and Rick Perry continue to generate strongly favorable impressions among Republicans familiar with them. Meanwhile, those familiar with Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul express less intensely positive opinions of those candidates now than at any point this year. The result is a clear separation of 12 percentage points between the top and middle tiers of Republican presidential candidates in Gallup’s Positive Intensity Score from Aug. 15-28 Gallup Daily tracking. The average Positive Intensity Scores show much smaller gaps between the current top- and middle-tier candidates.

Two potential candidates included in the measurement, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani, fall between the middle and top tiers, with current scores of 16 and 17, respectively.

Of all the candidates Gallup tracks, Jon Huntsman has the lowest score, 1. That is also his personal low, and he is one of four candidates, along with Romney, Bachmann, and Paul, to have a personal low in the current data. Newt Gingrich, still mired in the lower tier of candidates with Huntsman and Paul, has shown some improvement in his score in recent weeks, now 7 after descending to 1 at the end of July.

So, what does this all mean?

Texas Governor Rick Perry is solidfying his front-runner status in this race. Governor Perry is the CLEAR front-runner at this point.

Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann are starting to fade and the rest of the field are non-starters.

Game over for Perry – unless there is some monumental gaffe.

The Chart:

Two-time candidate Mitt Romney and tea party upstart Michele Bachmann are neck and neck leading the pack, and retired pizza chief Herman Cain is in third place in a new Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely participants in the state’s Republican presidential caucuses.

The results are bad news for the earnest Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor who is in single digits despite a full-throttle campaign.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and business executive, claims 23 percent, and Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman and evangelical conservative, garners 22 percent. Neither has done heavy lifting in Iowa.

The rest of the Republican field is at least 12 points behind them.

As, I have said for the past few weeks, this race is boiling down to one between Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. The only wild cards in the race are whether Texas Governor Rick Perry will run and of course, what Sarah Palin will do. Palin is traveling to Iowa this week for the debut of her documentary.