Election 2012: Obama 48%, Gingrich 37%

For the third straight week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has lost ground in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup against President Obama.  

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Obama attracting 48% of voters, while Gingrich earns the vote from 37%.  Nine percent (9%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The new numbers reflect a sharp decline from the peak of the Gingrich surge in late November.  At that point, he led the president by a 45% to 43% margin. He was leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination at that time as well. However, almost as soon as he became the front-runner, the former speaker’s numbers turned around. He went from 45% support in late November to 40% in early December to 39% last week  and 37% today. During that same time frame, Obama went from 43% to 48% when matched against Gingrich.

In Iowa, site of the first voting event of 2012, Gingrich has seen his lead disappear. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney now has a slight edge in that state, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul is nearly even with the two front-runners.

Romney continues to run even with the president in head-to-head matchups. Other GOP hopefuls trail by seven-to-15 percentage points. Gingrich falls right in the middle of that range.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on December 18-19, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.