Election 2012: Obama 49%, Gingrich 34%

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may have moved into a distant third place in the primary race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, but he trails President Obama by 15 points in a hypothetical general election matchup.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. voters shows Obama with 49% support to Gingrich’s 34%. Eleven percent (11%) prefer another candidate, while six percent (6%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

Support for Gingrich is up slightly from 30% in June but is below results measured in March and late January. Obama’s support has stayed in the narrow range of 47% to 49% against the Georgia Republican.

A generic Republican candidate has led the president in weekly polling for three months now. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has run neck-and-neck with Obama in surveys for weeks, but now Georgia businessman Herman Cain has joined Romney as the only named GOP hopefuls who are competitive with the president in early poll.
 

Gingrich is the only other candidate aside from Romney and Cain who earns double-digit support in the latest survey of Likely Republican Primary voters. He gets 10% backing, well behind Romney and Cain who each pick up 29% of the vote.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 12-13, 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.