December 07, 2011 08:54 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Love Them Some Newt

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The other shoe drops today, though, matchups from PPP:

As weak as Obama is in Colorado, if the Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich it doesn’t look like it matters. Obama leads Gingrich 50-42 in the state, including a whooping 56-32 advantage with independents. Gingrich is a reviled figure with only 32% of voters seeing him favorably to 55% with a negative opinion, including a 25/59 spread with independents.

Republicans can win Colorado next year- they just have to nominate Mitt Romney if they want to do it. If he was the GOP candidate it would be a toss up in the state, as he trails Obama only 47-45. Where Gingrich trails by 24 points with independents, Romney has only a 12 point deficit. Where Gingrich wins over only 11% of Democrats, Romney gets 14%. And even with Republicans where Gingrich gets 82% of his own party’s vote, Romney gets 84%.

This is the trend we’re seeing in our general election polling. Democrats and independents are much more inclined to vote for Romney than Gingrich.  And even though Republican voters like Gingrich much better than Romney overall, there are fewer Republicans reluctant to vote for Romney in the general election than there are who are hesitant to vote for Newt.  The GOP’s move toward supporting Gingrich is seriously endangering its chances of winning in the fall. [Pols emphasis]

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We didn’t get a chance to get to this yesterday, but a new PPP poll on the GOP Presidential field shows that Colorado Republicans love them some Newt Gingrich. From Colorado Independent:

The poll shows Gingrich up 37-18 over Romney. Michele Bachmann is third with 9 percent and Ron Paul comes in at 6 percent. It wasn’t that long ago that Texas Governor Rick Perry was thought to be leading in Colorado, but according to this poll he is down to 4 percent.

In September, the last time PPP polled in Colorado, Perry led Romney 31-18. A Bloomberg poll released at about the same time also had Perry leading in Colorado. Gingrich was considered a fringe candidate at that time.

The polling firm noted that Gingrich seems to have picked up virtually all of Herman Cain’s supporters.

The most interesting part of this poll in our view is the fact that presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney has completely plateaued — he’s pulling the same 18 percent that he received in September.