President 2012 New Hampshire GOP Poll Watch: Romney 27% Trump 21% Huckabee 12% Gingrich 12%

According to the latest PPP Poll.

Mitt Romney’s still the clear early front runner to take the Republican primary in New Hampshire next year but for the first time in our polling of the race PPP finds someone within single digits of him…Donald Trump.

If Trump actually run 21% of New Hampshire GOP voters say they’d vote for him, compared to 27% for Romney. The key to Trump’s relatively strong showing? He does well with birthers and Tea Partiers, two groups he has seemed to actively court with his public comments of late. 42% of primary voters firmly say they do not believe Barack Obama was born in the United States to 35% who believe that he was and 23% who aren’t sure. Trump leads Romney 22-21 with the birther crowd, but Romney holds the overall lead because he’s up by a much wider margin with the folks who dismiss the birther theory.

Trump also leads Romney 23-21 with the Republican primary voters who consider themselves to be Tea Party members but that’s only 30% of the electorate and Romney’s up by a good margin with the folks who don’t identify with that movement.

If you take Trump out of the picture Romney maintains the customary wide lead he has shown in most polling of the state. On the standard Republican primary question we ask in every state Romney gets 31% to 15% for Mike Huckabee, 13% for Newt Gingrich, 10% for Sarah Palin and Ron Paul, 4% for Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, and 2% for Haley Barbour.

Yeah, but don’t get to excited Donald Trump or anti-Romney fans. Mitt still owns New Hampshire and nobody does particularly well there except him.

I suspect most candidates, when the field becomes more defined, will ignore New Hampshire or try for a second/third place finish before moving on to primary elections that will matter, South Carolina, Nevada and Florida.