Little Movement in Florida

PPP's second day of tracking in Florida finds little change in the state of the race. Mitt Romney leads with 39% to 32% for Newt Gingrich with Rick Santorum at 14% and Ron Paul at 11%. Romney and Santorum are both down a single point from Saturday's polling while Paul has gained 2 points and Gingrich has stayed in place.

The reason we don't find Gingrich getting blown out by a double digit margin in Florida is that he's winning a lot of the same groups he did in South Carolina. He's up 37-33 with Evangelicals, 40-33 with Tea Partiers, and 36-29 with voters who describe themselves as 'very conservative.'  The problem for him is that he's not winning those groups by the same kinds of margins that he did in the Palmetto State.

Romney continues to have a large lead in the bank in Florida. 34% of our respondents said they'd already voted and with those folks he has a 45-33 lead.  That puts Gingrich in a position where he'd have to not only win the election day vote, but win it by 6 or 7 points to upset Romney in the state. The kind of reversal necessary to make that happen seems unlikely to occur in the next 48 hours.

Almost Romney's entire lead in Florida is coming from moderate voters. He has a 58-15 lead over Gingrich with them and only a 1 point advantage with the rest of the electorate. Other groups that continue to be a particular source of strength for Romney are seniors (48-32) and women (43-30).

We will have one final night of Florida tracking tomorrow.

Full results here

Comments

[Changing4ever]

Lots of new polls show +20 Romney Lead. There is serious divergence here.

[joel]

You show this race a lot closer than everyone else with Romney having half the lead Rasmussen shows. You will either show you are the best pollster out there or have egg on your face.

[Thomas]

In Florida, do you screen by asking, at any point in the interview, whether the respondent is registered as a Republican?

[claire]

obviously biased against Romney.

39-32. final margin was 46-32