Unlikely Voter

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Busy day for polling. The second of three noteworthy poll releases today comes from American Research Group, who polling New Hampshire.

The story today continues to be good news for Mitt Romney.

The facts: 600 likely caucus goers for Iowa, 600 likely primary voters for New Hampshire. The latter poll was taken a week ago, the Iowa poll concluded yesterday. Telephone interviews, no mention of mobile phone handling. MoE 4.

Mitt Romney leads both polls. In New Hampshire he shows a smaller lead than we previously saw, but Romney 30-Rick Perry 13-Ron Paul 12-Jon Huntsman 10 is still great shape for him to be in. He’s virtually steady in ARG polling, going 32-39-20 since April. Perry is up 11 since the July poll, Paul is up 8, Huntsman opened at 10. Again, infrequent polling is the bane of trend analysis.

In Iowa, I see results that surprise me a great deal. Every other poll I’ve seen, including the ARG NH poll, has shown Michele Bachmann’s candidacy to be dying. But she finishes second in the Iowa poll at 15%, behind Romney’s 21%. Rick Perry at 14 and Ron Paul at 12 round out the top. Bachmann is down 6 from July though, while Perry is up 12, Romney is up 4, and Paul is down 2.

Sarah Palin is in the polls, but at 4% in both polls, she’s irrelevant.

I have to conclude Perry is showing a bit of weakness after a series of bad debates, but nobody is standing out to replace him as the anti-Romney candidate, while Romney still benefits from being the anti-Perry candidate.