Last week’s shock poll bringing Herman Cain into third place needed confirmation before we could be sure that Cain was a serious contender.
Two new polls of Florida Republicans by SurveyUSA for WFLA and by War Room Logistics seem to provide that confirmation and more: Both put Herman Cain in second in the key early primary state.
These are not national polls, so they aren’t directly comparable with the last four major national polls, three of which put Rick Perry first, and the fourth which put Perry in second behind Mitt Romney. But that fourth poll seemed to show Perry voters giving Cain another look, and these two bolster that theory.
Facts: SurveyUSA polled 500 likely GOP primary voters, mobile and landline users handled, MoE 4.5. WRL polled 1331 likely voters by phone, and the Republican-only subsample had a MoE of 4.2. The overall poll was weighted, but WRL tell me only the overall results were weighted, but not the Republican results.
In WRL polling of Florida, Herman Cain gains 18.8 points to land at 23.7%, in second behind Romney who gained 3.2 points to land at 28.2%. The big loser was Rick Perry, who fell off the map, losing 15.5% to fall to 9.1%, behind even Newt Gingrich’s 9.8%.
SurveyUSA gives the same top four. Romney leads at 27%, Cain follows at 25%, Perry falls way off to 13%, and Gingrich ends up at 6%.
Fascinating to me is the landline/mobile split in the SUSA poll. In a traditional poll, Romney would have led 34-22-14. But mobile users broke for Cain, giving him 20 to Romney’s 13 and Perry’s 11, which left the overall result so close. Romney’s remaining edge in the poll ends up being from “Moderate” voters, as “Very Conservative” and “Conservative” voters were about evenly split between Romney and Cain, but “Moderates” broke 34-19 for Romney.
Florida of course made headlines for Cain already when he won a straw poll there, but now we have two independent polls appearing to confirm a genuine swell of support for him there. The next national poll could be a critical moment for Rick Perry. If he is confirmed to be crashing nationally, he may have little time to recover, or be relegated to irrelevance like Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann before him.
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I no more believe these polls than the man in the moon story. I vividly remember the so called polls when M. Rubio was running. They kept coming up with polls that said Cris was ahead and they did this for months before they finally had to report the truth before the election proved how corrup they really were. These polls are meant to drive the vote to Cain so as to eliminate Perry from the race then they can go after Cain on all his unconservative views and statements. This man is not ready to be president but they have to eliminate Perry first then Cain so they can push Romney on us like they did McCain. Not again, never again.
@ihavehadit
“…then they can go after Cain for all his unconservative views and statements…” Have you any examples of Cain’s unconservative views and statements? I have been following the primary process quite closely and reading about Cain for the last few months, nothing comes to mind that would be ammunition for a move such as you describe. As for Cain not being ready, maybe maybe not there is a long primary season to go lets see what shakes out.
ihavehadit…I, too, would like you to show me Cain’s UNconservative-ness! As an independent, disliking both parties, checked out Cain THOROUGHLY. What first attracted me was his NON-POLITICAL background! Then his conservative stance. Did a background check; went to see him several times, listened to him many times; asked him personally about certain views and he came out clean 100%. How many years we have voted in career politicians to have them mess us up…THEN to make matters worse, the country ignorantly voted in a man with very questionable background, history, and people association. In essence he is a socialist and absolutely no educational background qualifying him for this job.
Our country is in the sewer because of politicians. So why not give a non-politican, businessman, mathematician, non-racist, intelligent man who will surround himself with knowledgeable, moral people to raise our country up from the sewer and back on the ‘shining hill’ that Reagan had put us on.
Dr, Ron Paul, Republican representative from Texas is the only true patriot and fiscal conservative who has voted consistently with the U.S. Constitution, and for liberty for the American public. No other elected politician else can say that in their resume, although some come close, but none in the present slate of Republican candidates in the running for the office of President of the United States. The elites and the major media don’t care for his Constitutional fervor and call him a kook and work to marginalize him, by telling everyone that he is unelectable. If at any time in our Nation’s history we need a Bill of Rights advocate it is now as we stand on the precipice of losing our country to bankruptcy, monetarily and spiritually. Please wake up fellow citizens and do the research and you will see the truth.
I like what I hearing from Herman Cain. I have been following his campaign long before Florida. Don’t get me wrong- almost anyone on the GOP stage is better than our current President. All the candidates have problem, but I have liked what I have heard from Cain for a long time. His surge is real too. You can discredit one poll as being odd…. you cannot discredit 6 polling companies showing Cain’s rise be it in Florida or nationally. He is the candidte that will vie against Romney for the nomination.