[ He’s only up by 12 points with actual Republican voters, but he has a 40-21 advantage with the Democrats and independents planning to vote that pushes his overall lead up to 15 points. ]
Not sure what to make of this.
Independents here are largely social conservative and populists. Most of them are Reagan Democrats and distrusting of slick politicians. Newt's baggage hurts him. The more people know of Mitt the more they don't like him. Santorum's the best of the lot, earned his living, and is who he is.
As far as democrats go, PPP, a dem polling firm, had the crosstabs at 4% of the voters being democrat. Most here hate big business. Romney IS that. Newt was the boogeyman for Clinton. Ron Paul is libertarian far right. Michigan democrats love government. Santorum's simply not them.
I believe that the most sensible way to interpret the support that Santorum gets from Indy&Dem voters (evangelical, etc.) “who intend to vote in the primary” is that there are many conservative Dems and Indys (of which I could count myself) who can’t stand Obama, distrust Romney and Paul, and worry about Mr.Newt. In other words: interpret it straight up, as opposed to how some “operation chaos” fearmongers encourage.
Registered RepublicansThey only say this in their press release:
Likely voters
Or, WHAT?
PPP surveyed 404 Republican primary between February 10th and 12th. The margin of error for the survey is +/-4.9%. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews. PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates.Can anyone interpret this???