PA Republicans: Santorum should drop to Senate race

Pennsylvania Republicans have a message for Rick Santorum: run for the Senate instead of the White House.

Santorum is in a distant 3rd in our Republican Presidential polling in the state, with only 14% of GOP primary voters saying he'd be their top choice. That puts him behind Michele Bachmann's 24% and Mitt Romney's 17%. Santorum does run ahead of Herman Cain at 10%, Ron Paul at 9%, Rick Perry at 8%, Newt Gingrich at 6%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Tim Pawlenty at 1%.

Bachmann's lead in Pennsylvania reinforces the advantage we showed for her nationally in numbers released this morning. As is the case everywhere she's leading primarily based on her strength with the far right, and she seems to be squeezing Santorum out with that group of voters which should be his natural base of support. She gets 30% with them to only 15% for Santorum. Bachmann also leads Romney 25-18 with 'somewhat conservative' voters, a group that he has tended to have the advantage with nationally. Romney does crush Bachmann with moderates by a 33-6 margin, but they only account for 16% of primary voters so that doesn't take him far.

Pennsylvania Republicans may not support Santorum for the White House but they would like him to be their candidate for another shot at Bob Casey next year. 47% say he'd be their choice of a nominee with no one else even registering in double digits- Jake Corman and Tim Murphy are each named by 9% of respondents, Jim Gerlach by 7%, Laureen Cummings by 5%, Charlie Dent by 4%, Marc Scaringi by 1%, and Kim Ward by 0%.

Whether Santorum ends up jumping into the Senate race or not these numbers make it pretty clear that Republicans are looking for someone new to get into the field. The two announced candidates we tested- Cummings and Scaringi- account for only 6%. That leaves a whole lot of room for someone else to jump in and win the nomination. It's safe to say GOP voters are not satisfied with the current crop of candidates.

Looking at the GOP Presidential field without Santorum included Bachmann maintains her 7 point advantage at 27% to Romney's 20% and 10% each for Paul and Perry. And if you throw Sarah Palin into the mix she surpasses Romney for second, getting 18%. That puts her behind Bachmann's 23% but ahead of Romney's 14% and Perry's 11%. No matter what permutation of the candidate field you look at Bachmann's the early favorite of Republicans in the Keystone State.

Full results here