National GOP: Romney 39%, Santorum 27%, Gingrich 17%, Paul 10%
Mitt Romney still holds a double-digit lead over Rick Santorum among Republicans nationwide, although the gap between the two is slightly narrower following Super Tuesday’s mixed signals. But more GOP voters than ever now expect Romney to be the party’s nominee.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters shows Romney ahead of Santorum by 12 points – 39% to 27%. That’s a little tighter than it was a week ago when Romney led the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania by 16 – 40% to 24%. It was Romney's biggest lead and the highest level of support earned by any GOP candidate in regular surveying of the race. But two weeks before that, Santorum was up by 12 points – 39% to 27%.
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Republican Primary Voters was conducted on March 7, 2012 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.