The Iowa caucuses are shaping up to be a two man race between former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, according to an NBC News/Marist poll released Friday.
Mr. Romney finished with 23 percent of the votes, slightly ahead of Mr. Paul who finished with 21 percent. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum remains in third place, as he did in a recent CNN/Time poll, he finished with 15 percent.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to decline in popularity, he drew the support of 13 percent of the voters, one percentage point behind Texas Governor Rick Perry who finished with 14 percent. Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann finished in last place with 6 percent.
Mr. Gingrich’s campaign appears to be suffering from the barrage of negative ads running against him in Iowa right now. Super PACs that support Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry are running ads against him, and those two candidates along with Mr. Paul are also running their own separate ads against the former Georgia lawmaker.
In a late November NBC News/Marist poll of Iowa voters, Mr. Gingrich held a substantial lead over the entire GOP field, finishing with 28 percent, 9 percentage points ahead of Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul who were tied in that poll at 19 percent.
In the CNN/Time poll released Wednesday, Mr. Gingrich was ahead of Mr. Perry, and now trails the Texas governor by a percentage point.
“More than half of [Gingrich’s] support has evaporated,” Lee Miringoff, director of Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said of the results.
“He took it on the chin. This is the Romney dream scenario. When you look at the Tea Party and conservatives, they are all splintered,” Mr. Miringoff added.
Voters who identified themselves as Tea Party Republicans in the NBC poll were extremely divided. Mr. Santorum leads among the Tea Party base with 20 percent, and Mr. Paul and Mr. Romney are tied among Tea Party Republicans with 17 percent, while Mr. Gingrich finished with 16 percent and Mr. Perry drew 15 percent of the Tea Party vote.
Surprisingly, Ms. Bachmann, who seemed to have drawn the majority of her support from the Tea Party in recent months, finished last among Tea Party voters with just 10 percent.
Another result shown from this poll is that Mr. Paul has not suffered in Iowa from the negativity surrounding his campaign regarding the series of racist newsletters that ran under his name in the 1980s and 90s. The Texas congressman placed in first or second place in all of the polls of Iowa voters released this week.
Earlier this week, prior to his surge in the polls, Mr. Santorum summed up the Iowa caucuses into “three primaries.”
“There’s really three primaries going on here,” Mr. Santorum posited to reporters in Adel, Iowa Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
“There’s the libertarian primary, which Ron Paul is going to win. Then you’ve got the moderate primary, which Gingrich and Romney are scrumming for. And you’ve got three folks who are running as strong conservatives,” the former Pennsylvania senator added.
Despite their low amount of support in polls this week, both Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Bachmann believe they each still have a good chance at contending to win on January 3rd.
“I’m paying total attention to Iowa. Everything I’m trying to do right now is here and will be for the next six days,” Mr. Gingrich said Thursday.
The NBC News/Marist poll was conducted between December 27th and December 28th among 2,905 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. A total of 425 of those voters identified themselves as likely Iowa caucus voters, that sample had a margin of error of 4.8 percentage points.
