Another good week for Cain

Herman Cain is getting pretty close to being something more than the flavor of the month. PPP's newest polls find him with a double digit lead in Wisconsin, and running only a point behind Mitt Romney in Nevada.  This now makes 4 weeks in a row where Cain's been on the top of our polls- in 9 surveys we've conducted over that period of time he's held the lead in 8 with this Nevada poll serving as the only exception.

In Wisconsin Cain's at 30% to 18% for Romney, 12% each for Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, 8% for Ron Paul, 5% for Michele Bachmann, 2% for Rick Santorum, and 1% each for Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson.

In Nevada Romney's at 29% to 28% for Cain, 15% for Gingrich, 7% for Paul, 6% for Perry, 3% for Bachmann, 2% for Santorum and Huntsman, and 0% for Johnson.


Cain's numbers continue to represent a huge amount of momentum. He's gained 21 points from late July in Nevada, when he was at 7%. And he's gained 23 points from mid-August in Wisconsin where he was also at 7%. It's the Tea Party that continues to drive Cain's support. He's up 37-19 on Romney with those voters in Nevada with Gingrich in second at 20%. And in Wisconsin he gets 37% with them as well with Gingrich at 17%, Perry at 12%, and Romney all the way back in a tie for 4th with Ron Paul at 8%.

One thing that does remain a problem for Cain is that his voters are not strongly committed- only 41% in Nevada say that they'll definitely vote for him, compared to 59% of Romney's supporters who say they're all in.  And in Wisconsin just 29% of his voters say they're firmly in his camp compared to 34% for Romney. Cain's support is broad at this point- but it's not deep.

One other note on Cain- he may be within a point of Romney in Nevada on a poll but since his campaign doesn't really appear to have any organization it's unlikely he would come that close to Romney in the caucus- Romney will have an actual organization making sure his people get out to the polls, while it looks like Cain probably won't.

Besides Cain the other candidate in the race who continues to quietly have some momentum is Newt Gingrich. He finishes a solo third in Nevada and ties for third in Wisconsin but beyond that the shift in his favorability numbers over the last 5 months tells quite a story.  In May Gingrich was at a -21 spread (28/49) with Wisconsin Republicans. Now he's at +12 (50/38) representing a 33 point improvement over that period of time. His 12% support in Wisconsin is up from 6% in August and his 15% in Nevada is up from 6% in July.

Just as Cain and Gingrich continue to rise, Rick Perry continues to fall.  He's dropped 8 points from 20% to 12% in Wisconsin and he's gone down 12 points from 18% to 6% in Nevada. More striking than his decline in horse race support is his favorability numbers- in Wisconsin he's at a bad 36/40 but in Nevada he's at an even worse 25/59.  We're getting to a point where it's not just that Republicans aren't planning to vote for Perry- they just flat out don't like him. His numbers are strongly reminiscent of where Gingrich's were in May and June. It took Newt 4 or 5 months to recover from that and if it takes Perry 4 or 5 months to recover he'll already be done.

Romney's story continues to be stability. In Nevada he was at 31% in January, 24% in April, back to 31% in July, and now at 29%.  In Wisconsin he was at 12% in March, 17% in May, 13% in August, and now 18% in October. The cast of characters around him has risen and fallen dramatically over the course of the year but he's stayed basically in the same range the whole time. The question for him becomes when- if ever- he's going to be able to build on this solid but not significant amount of support he has.

Michele Bachmann's well on her way to being as irrelevant as Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson, and Jon Huntsman.  In Nevada she gets only 3%...and in Wisconsin, where she was tied for the lead at 20% the last time we polled, she's all the way down to 5%.

Full results here

Comments

[Stephen]

Maybe you could test voter opinions or knowledge of Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan. Analysis by the Tax Policy Center shows that it increases federal taxes of everyone making under roughly $200,000/year and that it increase taxes on those with incomes between $20,000 and $100,000 by about $4000. This would seem to be a fatal vulnerability for Herman Cain. Is the fact that he's doing so well due to ignorance or apathy about the tax plan?

[Obama 2012]

I was getting excited about the possibility of Herman Cain actually winning the nomination and the huge landslide victory for President Obama that would inevitably lead to... but then I looked at the numbers for this time of year in 2007 and I saw that John McCain was 5th... it's still way too early to be getting my hopes up. Cain is just too ridiculous of a candidate to last. ... as much as I want to believe that Obama is lucky enough to face off again Herman "I Dont Have Facts To Back This Up" Cain ... I just know it won't happen. Cain's numbers are eventually going to go the way of Perry & Bachmann's and in the end it's going to be Romney.

[Jason Stoutamire]

If, at the end of the year, Gingrich drops out and endorses Cain, in my opinion the nomination is Cain's for the taking. The only voters left for Romney are Huntsman's. Cain can still get Paul and Bachman supporters as well. Romney vs. Obama will guarantee the status quo for four more years. Anybody really think Romney will repudiate his own blueprint and repeal Obamacare?

I could get excited about a Cain/Gingrich ticket. Cain is a natural leader and motivator (and neither a politician nor a lawyer - he's a turnaround Picasso) and Gingrich is as intelligent and politically savvy as they come - it would be a very complimentary pair, although I've heard that they cannot be on the same ticket because they are from the same state? At the very least they have ideas far different from the ones who got us into this mess and that are, inexplicably, still being pursued by both parties. The tax code IS the anchor dragging our economy down. Bottom line, Cain is the only electable reform candidate currently available.

[Jo]

The big question for some, besides revising the tax code, is which candidate will flip-flop on issues once in office. Romney has a track record, Cain does not - but probably is less likely to change his position once in office, since he seems to operate from some basic principles and is pretty focused. Voters may want, above all, a candidate who is least likely to change his mind on key promises and will follow through on his principles. My guess is that Cain and Gingrich would both do that, but Gingrich would be better as a Cabinet member, not a candidate.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Jason Stoutamire,

You must remember that the Constitution does not apply to Republicans in Federal elections. Both Bush and Cheney were from Texas, modulo the fact that the Supreme Court was then as now a very partisan Republican club.

Neither Barry Goldwater nor John McCain was born in the United States.

It's not just that the Arizona Territory was not a State: it was arguably part of Mexico, rather than of the US. There is no sense in which it was greatly, let alone fully, under US governance at the time of Senator Goldwater's birth. The Panama Canal Zone has never, ever, ever been part of the US.

FWIW, I was born on the USAAF base at Bangor ycy Coyd, North Wales, a piece of territory far more under US government control than either Goldwater's or McCain's birthplaces. The same can be said for the Yokohama Veteran's Hospital, birthplace of my eldest (and US citizen) daughter, a piece of territory fully under the command, control and governance of the US Navy. (The Big E, the aircraft carrier Enterprise, was homebased at Yokosuka at the time, and kindly lent us their chief surgeon, the magnificent Dr. Johnson, as ob-gyn for the occasion.)

Now then, about Harold Stassen's birth certificate...

-dlj.