Newt Catches Mitt

November 17, 2011

A new Fox News poll finds former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at the top of the Republican field with 23 percent of the vote, just a hair ahead of Mitt Romney, who pulls 22 percent. Meanwhile, Herman Cain slid 9 points since the previous month’s poll, and now occupies third place with 15 percent.

The Fox poll, conducted by phone among registered voters from November 13-15, has the race looking like this:

Newt Gingrich 23%

Mitt Romney 22%

Herman Cain 15%

Ron Paul 8%

Rick Perry 7%

Michele Bachmann 6%

Jon Huntsman 3%

Rick Santorum 2%

Gingrich had an enormous surge, from 12% and third place on October 25^th to 23% today. He doesn’t do very well on the “likeable” scale, notching 8% for a fourth-place finish behind Rick Perry’s 9%, while Romney and Cain sit at the top with 26% and 25% respectively. Evidently, Republican voters want a smart S.O.B. who will take Barack Obama apart during the debates.

On the other hand, only Romney beats Obama in a head-to-head match-up, 44-42. Cain loses 38-47, while Gingrich loses 41-46.

Romney remains perched on his 20-23% rock of ages. Paul and Santorum are holding fairly steady as well. Perry slipped a little more, Bachmann jumped from 3% to 6%, and Huntsman isn’t an asterisk any more.

The pool of undecided voters is down to 14%, while 60% of respondents said they might change their minds about who they support, so things should get interesting once the primaries start knocking second-tier candidates out of the race.

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Written By John Hayward

John Hayward began his blogging career as a guest writer at Hot Air under the pen name "Doctor Zero," producing a collection of essays entitled Doctor Zero: Year One. He is a great admirer of free-market thinkers such as Arthur Laffer, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell. He writes both political and cultural commentary, including book and movie reviews. An avid fan of horror and fantasy fiction, he has produced an e-book collection of short horror stories entitled Persistent Dread. John is a former staff writer for Human Events. He is a regular guest on the Rusty Humphries radio show, and has appeared on numerous other local and national radio programs, including G. Gordon Liddy, BattleLine, and Dennis Miller.

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