Romney support falling, Huck up

On Monday we'll release numbers on the Republican primary for President in Florida. This is a state where it's generally assumed that Mitt Romney is the favorite, because he did pretty well there in 2008. A deeper look comparing how Romney did in various states in 2008 to how he's polling now though suggests that's a flawed assumption.

Over the course of the last five months PPP has polled Republican voters in 16 different states that had primaries or caucuses while Romney was still in the race for President in 2008. Comparing the support Romney received then to the support he has now does not present a pretty picture for his chances at winning the nomination. On average he is doing 14 points worse than he did in his first campaign. These numbers suggest that little of the support he received in 2008 was 'hard' and that with a different field of candidates he could have difficulty getting the same people who voted for him the first time around to do it again.

Some observations on the data:

-Romney's level of support has declined from his 2008 share of the vote in 14 out of 16 states that we've polled. If there's a silver lining for him though it's the 2 states where he's improved- the key early contests of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

-Romney's drop is much more severe in caucus states, where he may have been one of few candidates with the resources to make a serious effort, than primary states. If you throw out the caucus states of Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Colorado, and Minnesota from this analysis though Romney still has an average drop of 8.5 points from the support he received in the 11 primary states.

I don't know whether these declining numbers for Romney are because voters have actually turned against him over the last three years or because he was more of a default choice they weren't terribly enthused about in the first place, but they certainly show he hasn't been making a whole lot of new friends since his last bid.

Here are the full numbers:

State	Romney 2008%	Romney Poll Position	Shift
Arizona	34%	23%	-11
California	35%	22%	-13
Connecticut	33%	28%	-5
Colorado	60%	19%	-41
Illinois	29%	12%	-17
Massachusetts	51%	47%	-4
Minnesota	41%	13%	-28
Missouri	29%	13%	-16
New Jersey	28%	18%	-10
Tennessee	24%	11%	-13
Maine	52%	15%	-37
South Carolina	15%	17%	+2
Nevada	51%	31%	-20
Michigan	39%	26%	-13
New Hampshire	32%	40%	+8
Iowa	25%	18%	-7

Mike Huckabee on the other hand has seen his support on the rise since 2008. He's polling an average of 3 points better than his performance in these 16 states the first time he ran.

-Huckabee's doing better in 11 of the 16 states we've looked at- the exceptions are the important states of Iowa and South Carolina (although that had a lot to do with Jim DeMint being in the poll), and the less important states of Minnesota, Tennessee, and Missouri.

-There is no difference between primary and caucus states for Huckabee's numbers the way there is for Romney's.

Huckabee's been picking up supporters over the last three years. Romney's been losing them. It'll be interesting to see if Huckabee actually takes advantage of this opportunity.

Here's the full data for Huckabee:

State	Huckabee 2008%	Huckabee Poll Position	Shift
Arizona	9%	19%	+10
California	12%	15%	+3
Connecticut	7%	15%	+8
Colorado	13%	16%	+3
Illinois	17%	18%	+1
Massachusetts	4%	10%	+6
Minnesota	20%	15%	-5
Missouri	32%	29%	-3
New Jersey	8%	18%	+10
Tennessee	34%	31%	-3
Maine	6%	19%	+13
South Carolina	30%	20%	-10
Nevada	8%	14%	+6
Michigan	16%	20%	+4
New Hampshire	11%	13%	+2
Iowa	34%	30%	-4