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Romney and New Hampshire

The most surprising item from the latest New Hampshire primary Suffolk poll was the response to the question, “Do you trust Mitt Romney to say what he believes, even if it is unpopular?” Amazingly, 60% of all respondents said yes. Most of the reactions to the poll have focused on how little support Perry has […]

The most surprising item from the latest New Hampshire primary Suffolk poll was the response to the question, “Do you trust Mitt Romney to say what he believes, even if it is unpopular?” Amazingly, 60% of all respondents said yes. Most of the reactions to the poll have focused on how little support Perry has (8%), and how well Ron Paul (14%) and Huntsman (10%) are doing, but what I find most newsworthy is that most people “very likely” to vote in the primary (62%) don’t perceive Romney to be the famously unprincipled panderer that he is, and conservatives are even more likely to agree that Romney can be trusted to say what he believes. When asked the same question about Perry, fewer respondents agree (54%). 32% of all respondents name Romney as the candidate they trust the most.

Contrary to the assumption that I and a lot of other observers have made, Romney wins more support among conservatives (48%) than he does among moderates (37%), and Perry has the support of just 13% of conservatives right now. Huntsman and Paul are winning over a third of the moderates between the two of them, and Romney is still running away with the lead. I had been assuming that Romney would win almost all of the moderate vote and pick up enough conservatives along the way to eke out victories, but it seems so far that he is faring well with both groups. Many things could change in the next five months, but it’s hard to see how Romney fails to win New Hampshire.

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