August 16, 2011 03:48 AM UTC

Move Over, Mitt Romney?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic reports:

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he was running for president on Saturday but Colorado Republicans have been eagerly looking forward to the news, according to Public Policy Polling. Perry tied long-running candidate Mitt Romney for the top spot among Colorado GOP voters surveyed by PPP the first week of August. Perry polled way out in front of controversial Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who won a much-watched Iowa straw poll last week, rivaling Romney’s status as front runner.

“Rick Perry’s only been in the presidential race for two days but based on our most recent round of state polling he’s already close to deserving co-front runner status,” wrote PPP Director Tom Jensen in a release. “We found him tied for the lead last week among Republican voters in both Colorado and North Carolina, two very different states and also two that are a long way from Texas.”

Perry and and Romney each polled 20 percent in Colorado. Bachmann garnered only 12 percent support…

Mitt Romney is Mormon and analysts have suggested evangelical GOP primary voters will not vote for him for that reason. Analysts have also warned that strong Christian-identifying candidates like Bachmann and Perry will trade on that religious bias to defeat Romney.

We can’t say with certainty how Texas Gov. Rick Perry will fare in the long run in all parts of the country, but we do think it’s likely that Perry will quickly threaten former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as the frontrunner in Western states not named Utah. Perry could also sap or co-opt Michele Bachmann’s shallow base of support–Perry’s success depends on it, as Bachmann’s continued status as a top-tier candidate after winning the Ames straw poll depends on holding on to the voters they have naturally in common. That said, the religious bias problem is more subtle for Romney than billed. It’s a credit to Romney that he’s been able to make the inroads with conservative voters that he has in his career, and in the absence of a viable evangelical candidate, we really think that conservative Colorado voters might have stuck with him.

Now that they have Perry, though, the evangelicals don’t need to “compromise” anything.