The Public Polling Policy (PPP) poll of likely Florida Republican primary voters released Saturday shows former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign has plummeted in Florida.
After a week that featured two nationally televised debates and a proposal for a moon colony, Mr. Gingrich dropped 6 percentage points from the PPP poll released last Sunday. The poll shows former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney garnering 40 percent of the votes, with Mr. Gingrich trailing at 32 percent.
The race in Florida remains a two man race, as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum finished the poll in a distant third place with 15 percent of the votes, trailed by Texas congressman Ron Paul who finished with 9 percent.
Mr. Paul has not been campaigning in Florida, and Mr. Santorum has left the state several times this week to return to his home state of Pennsylvania.
“Florida Republicans have been in a zig zag pattern over the last two weeks,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling, in a press release accompanying the poll results. “Mitt had a solid lead, then Newt surged into first place himself, and now it’s gone right back to Mitt with a solid lead.”
According to the poll results, Mr. Gingrich’s “favorability” rating has also declined this week by 13 points since their last poll of voters in Florida.
The former House speaker’s highly publicized moon colony proposal might have hurt his popularity in Florida as well. Although it received a round of applause when he announced it at a campaign event on Florida’s space coast, only 22 percent of the voters polled support the U.S. pursuing a colony on the moon.
Mr. Gingrich’s attempts to characterize Mr. Romney as someone who “lives in a world of Swiss bank accounts” has not hurt the Bain Capital co-founder in Florida. The PPP poll found that despite the high unemployment and foreclosure rate in Florida, 68 percent of Republican voters have a favorable opinion of wealthy Americans.
Senior citizens make up a large percentage of voters in Florida, and according to the PPP poll they overwhelmingly support Mr. Romney. The poll found that 50 percent of voters 65 years of age or older favor the former Massachusetts governor.
Although he is greatly trailing Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum finished the poll with the highest “favorability” rating, at 65 percent.
Mr. Romney’s move to hire Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s debate coach has paid off, as the majority of voters who said they watched Thursday night’s debate on CNN voted for Mr. Romney.
The PPP polling sample did not include a large number of Hispanic voters, so it still remains to be seen which candidate that demographic will select on Tuesday. According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, 22 percent of Florida’s 18.8 million citizens is of Hispanic descent, so it will be interesting to see how their votes influence the results of the election on Tuesday.
The PPP poll surveyed 387 likely Florida Republican primary voters on January 28th with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
