Rod comments on Romney and Santorum:

It’s astonishing how much deeper and stronger the support among Republicans is for Santorum than for Romney. Read down into the poll. Romney and Santorum both have a 50 percent favorable rating, but Romney’s unfavorables are more than twice Santorum’s.

This is true, but I’m not sure that it shows the “deeper and stronger” support Rod sees. Romney’s unfavorable rating among Republicans is 14%, and Santorum’s is 6%, but Santorum is not as well-known as Romney. 27% of Republican respondents said they hadn’t heard enough about Santorum to have a reaction either way, and just 13% said the same about Romney. Like Santorum’s new Megadeth supporter, most Republican primary voters probably don’t know much about Santorum, and what they may know is going to give them a favorable impression of Santorum. My guess is that a lot of Romney’s liabilities are already much better-known than Santorum’s, and Romney is counting on making more voters aware of Santorum’s flaws in the next two or three weeks.

The more interesting result from the CBS/NYT poll is the answer to the question about which candidate would “do the most to help middle-class Americans.” Santorum has a clear edge here over the rest of the field and leads Romney 32-19%. That’s one of Santorum’s greatest advantages right now. One of the biggest problems he has is that 61% of Republicans believe a long nomination contest will hurt the GOP in the fall, and more victories for Santorum will force a longer nomination contest than there would be otherwise.