CNN/ORC poll: Barack Obama tied with GOP nominee in Ga.

Updated at 4:30 p.m.: Yet another poll of the presidential primary in Georgia, again showing Newt Gingrich in the upper-40 percentile, has just been dropped by CNN/ORC International.

The poll also shows, like two others today, Santorum dangerously under 20 percent — the amount needed Tuesday for a share of 34 at-large Georgia delegates. The CNN top lines:

– Gingrich, 47 percent;

– Mitt Romney, 24 percent;

– Santorum, 15 percent;

– and Ron Paul, 9 percent.

More interesting is the portion of the CNN poll that looks at a general election contest with President Barack Obama. Asked whether they would vote for the Republican nominee or the incumbent Democrat in November, 1,775 registered Georgia voters were split, 48 to 48 percent.

Updated at 12:15 p.m.: In the wee hours this morning, following on the heels of a weekend AJC poll, Public Policy Polling of North Carolina came out with yet another survey that shows GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich creeping toward the 50 percent mark in Georgia.

The PPP bottom line:

– Gingrich, 47 percent;

– Mitt Romney, 24 percent;

– Rick Santorum, 19 percent;

– Ron Paul, 8 percent.

Just before noon, Landmark/Rosetta Stone in Gwinnett County released a third poll, conducted Sunday (901 likely voters) and showing similar numbers: Gingrich, 44 percent; Romney, 23 percent; Santorum, 17 percent; and Paul, 7 percent.

The 50 percent mark is a significant one. As far as 34 statewide delegates go, distribution would still be proportional. But even if Gingrich finishes in the mid-40 percentile on Tuesday, that means he’d probably clear 50 percent in some congressional districts. And that’s where the winner-takes-all rule, with 42 delegates at stake, does apply.

The most salient PPP statistics:

[Sixty-six percent] of Republicans in the state have a favorable opinion of [Gingrich] to only 27% with a negative one. And although he now lives in Virginia, he’s still embraced as a native son. 71% of voters consider him to be a Georgian to only 22% who do not.

A Landmark/Rosetta poll from last week had Gingrich at 42 percent. Their analysis:

Gingrich leads in both the Metro Atlanta region as well as non-Metro Atlanta area. He retains particular commanding support among those voters who are age 65 and older, a demographic group in which he carries a majority of the vote. These voters remember Gingrich as a leader who led Republicans to a new House majority in the 1994 elections, the first such majority in four decades.

An AJC poll published on Saturday — in the field Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — gave Gingrich a lead of 38 percent. See the internals here.

***
Among those who consider Newt Gingrich to be a “fellow Georgian” is Gov. Nathan Deal, who today has an op-ed in the Marietta Daily Journal with his endorsement of the former 6th District congressman:

As Georgia conservatives, we owe Newt Gingrich — who in 1994 led the Republican Party to victory for the first time in 40 years — a debt of gratitude. Without this man giving voice to the practical conservatism the majority of Georgians now hold dear, the Republican Party in our state would not be where it is today.

***
Remember how Rick Santorum called President Barack Obama a “snob” for encouraging kids to get a college education? His wife was among those who persuaded him to backtrack. From Politico.com:

“He knows you always separate what you say from the person,” said Karen Santorum in an interview Saturday…, her first of the presidential campaign with a print media outlet. “He should have said what (Obama) said is ‘snobbish.’ It was a ‘snobbish comment,’ not he is ‘snobbish.’ There is a big difference. And he knows that. But everybody makes those mistakes along the journey.”

Karen Santorum also said this about the current first lady in the White House:

“[Michelle Obama] has done a lot for our country, and I admire her because she also has a very rigorous schedule. She is juggling being a mother and being first lady,” Karen Santorum said before lowering her voice to a girly whisper, “and you know, she’s got great arms.”

***
While much of the political world last week was in an uproar over health insurance coverage for contraception, former GOP candidate for governor was writing a coda for the previous uproar – over Planned Parenthood and abortion.

In an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Handel reprised the events that led to her resignation as vice president of governmental affairs for Susan G. Komen for the Cure – after a Komen effort to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood exploded:

Handel again accused Planned Parenthood of violating a “gentle lady’s agreement” to accept the decision quietly. Handel also said she was appalled by a media slant when it came to the topic of abortion.

“There is clearly a real bias around this, that somehow, the right to an abortion equals women’s rights. And I reject that,” she said. Here’s the clip:

***
The AJC’s Politifact Georgia today takes a look at the claim by Gwinnett County Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash that , when it comes to unemployment, her county is doing better than much of metro Atlanta.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

For instant updates, follow me on Twitter, or connect with me on Facebook.

171 comments Add your comment

james

March 5th, 2012
1:45 pm

tb newt might have for god’s forgiveness,but he still get’s the diamonds in his crown from tiffany’s,oncredit.

james

March 5th, 2012
1:53 pm

while liberals give their daughters a choice,conservatives take their’s out of school for a few days and they come back like nothing was wrong. how stupid does karen think we are.

james

March 5th, 2012
1:53 pm

while liberals give their daughters a choice,conservatives take their’s out of school for a few days and they come back like nothing was wrong. how stupid does karen think we are.

Travis McGee

March 5th, 2012
1:53 pm

Okay, the results will soon be in. Georgia State-Wide I.Q. Test Tomorrow!

Travis McGee

March 5th, 2012
1:53 pm

Okay, the results will soon be in. Georgia State-Wide I.Q. Test Tomorrow!

james

March 5th, 2012
2:01 pm

liberals give their daughters a choice, consertatives take their’s out of school for afew days and everything is fine. how stupid do they think we are.

Ga Values Ron Paul for Peace & Prosperity

March 5th, 2012
2:04 pm

A vote for Newt reall makes good sence????????????

2012 Republican Presidential Nomination NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl Romney 38, Santorum 32, Gingrich 13, Paul 13 Romney +6

2012 Republican Presidential Nomination Gallup Tracking Romney 38, Santorum 22, Gingrich 15, Paul 12 Romney +16

General Election: Romney vs. Obama NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl Obama 50, Romney 44 Obama +6

General Election: Santorum vs. Obama NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl Obama 53, Santorum 39 Obama +14

General Election: Gingrich vs. Obama NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl Obama 54, Gingrich 37 Obama +17

General Election: Paul vs. Obama NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl Obama 50, Paul 42 Obama +8

General Election: Romney vs. Obama Rasmussen Tracking Obama 45, Romney 43 Obama +2

General Election: Santorum vs. Obama Rasmussen Tracking Obama 46, Santorum 42 Obama +4

General Election: Gingrich vs. Obama Rasmussen Reports Obama 48, Gingrich 40 Obama +8

General Election: Paul vs. Obama Rasmussen Reports Obama 43, Paul 41 Obama +2

james

March 5th, 2012
2:06 pm

it took at least 3 times to get dixiecrats to listen.

VoteNewt

March 5th, 2012
2:16 pm

I am constantly amazed at how far the christian right will go to demoralize their competitors. Look at the money both Romney and Santorum have spent to drag old sludge through the hungry left wing media. Romney spends money like water… is he really as conservative as he says. Romney will get the Mormon vote. Santorum talks a good game yet the media has never questioned why he married a scarlet women who had lived with an abortion doctor for years before she married him. Santorum will get the die hard right to life vote. Ron Paul does not like jewish people… it is what it is, he also does not get anything done. Paul/Perot will get the libraterian vote. Newt is on his third marriage. Newt is by far the smartest of the bunch. He is a scrapper. He went up against Bill Clinton…. and won. You silly people need to wake up…. Newt Gingrich is the most qualified candidate in this election. Newt will get the true conservative vote.

Chauncy

March 5th, 2012
2:53 pm

NOT to worry. Gingrich will NEVER, EVER be elected president. We need someone who knows the issues and is not a phony. He is a hanger-on and really wants to be president. What would he do if elected? Nothing. His bleachy, plastic surgery wife is another thing. He should have stayed married to his other wife and people would have trusted him. He is for gay marriage (has a gay sister) and for the people with big bucks. SO LONG EYE OF NEWT, you’ll never make it, not even here in Georgia. I can’t stand to even look at your bloated face.

[...] (blog)Gingrich To Throw Down Debate GauntletWIBWPatch.com -Washington Post (blog) -Atlanta Journal Constitution (blog)all 1,895 news [...]

Chauncy

March 5th, 2012
2:57 pm

Your running mate should be Rush Limbaugh. Two of a kind. And both are fat.

RIC FLAIR

March 5th, 2012
3:01 pm

If Newt wins Ga then everyone who votes for him deserves a “flair chop”. GA will look stupid for voting for him and then look double stupid when he drops out of the race on Wed for finishing 4th in the other 9 states primaries as he has in every other primary. That aside GA is a great state in many aspects politics not being one of them.

Karen

March 5th, 2012
3:04 pm

Who in their right mind would ever vote for Newt. The man is a career politician and made 1.6 million of our taxpayers money working as a lobbyist for Fannie and Freddier. He also no repsect for women at all. I want someone who has real life business experince and someone who has never been a career politician.

Father A. Long

March 5th, 2012
3:42 pm

I will not vote for New! I have voted for every GOP candidate since Goldware!

Father A. Long

March 5th, 2012
3:43 pm

see ya MIDTOWN

March 5th, 2012
3:56 pm

Hey View from Midtown, or should I say what you are use to..view from behind…

……..if you weep for the state which you live, move the he!! out you dic^k!

Romney is the guy

March 5th, 2012
3:59 pm

You morons vote for Mitt please, a vote for Newt is like a vote for Obama. Newt is an idiot and has not lived here for years. Please… I hope this convinces one person!!!!!!!! Mitt can win this thing. The others can not. Don’t waste your vote folks!!

Jerome Horwitz

March 5th, 2012
4:08 pm

Wonder if Karen Santorum can exchange places with Ricky? She appears far more grounded in reality than her spouse.

Go President O

March 5th, 2012
4:58 pm

The President running neck and neck with the Regressives in good ‘ol redder ‘n red jow-jah? That must bode very, very well for the President. Or your average jow-gin is gettin’ smarter. Either way, me likey likey likey.

teehee

March 5th, 2012
4:59 pm

I’ll be casting a vote for the Santorum just to keep the clown car going a little while longer.

OLD Guardsman

March 5th, 2012
5:10 pm

Please Barry come spend a lot of your money down here because your “tied” with the GOP, Please… take what you would have spent in OH or MI and spend it down here.

Bill Orvis White

March 5th, 2012
5:11 pm

Any three of the candidates WILL BE a much better president that Hussein Obama. The problem for any of them will be is to clean up the major league mess left behind by the leftist community organizer. With that in mind, I’m praying for Speaker Gingrich. He is the man WHO CAN EASILY trounce Hussein Obama in a series of Lincoln/Douglas-style debates. Of course Speaker Gingrich cares about Georgia and the entire South. This is another why the Southern Coalition of the United States of America needs to be created. We think differently in these great states.
Amen,
Bill

OLD Guardsman

March 5th, 2012
5:13 pm

james – they are smart enough to figure out how to post something just once.

JB

March 5th, 2012
5:14 pm

Don’t believe ANY main stream poll. 8 weeks out,THEY told us Carter was 8 points ahead of Reagan….He won by 6 points. A 14 point swing. EVERY poll you see between now and election day will have Obama leading. Let’s hope not. Surely we aren’t that far gone. No, not bacause he’s black or a Democrat…..He’s just not a good President. The proof is in the pudding.

i

March 5th, 2012
5:17 pm

Can Romney carry GA in November, if he gets less than 30% in primary? I doubt it.

MrLiberty

March 5th, 2012
5:19 pm

Seriously, how can voters in GA be so ignorant and so deluded as to not support Ron Paul with more than 9%?? Gingrich’s ethics violations and convictions, multiple wives and adultery, Santorum’s liberal voting record for budget increases, massive spending increases, etc. and the obvious liberal policies and economic stands of Romney. All that compared with 12 solid terms in congress never voting for an unbalanced budget, never voting for a bailout, stimulus, personal pay raise, unconstitutional war, or other violation of civil liberties. The only sound economic plan to actually cut spending rather than just cut the proposed increases like the other 3.

Seriously, after virtually every one of his predictions/warnings about the economy, the housing bubble, the financial crisis, the undeclared wars, the destruction of civil liberties, etc. have come true you still think he doesn’t have the record to go up against Obama, but Newt does?? Have you bothered to actually look at Newt’s ENTIRE record, not just the stuff you like??

Please take a moment to just view one of the tens of thousands of YouTube videos about Ron Paul, go to his web site to ACTUALLY find out where HE actually stands rather than the lies the media is telling you. Isn’t it about time to finally wake up and realize that Mitt, Newt, and Rick are part of the establishment that caused all of these problems? Dr. Paul has always been the one speaking out about them and voting against these policies. What is it going to take to finally wake georgians up to this reality??

MrLiberty

March 5th, 2012
5:22 pm

Bill Orvis White – Any of the three you are I assume referring to WILL BE THE SAME AS OBAMA. Fundamentally on the critical issues about the role of government, none of these three is any different. And we can certainly count on a republican congress going along with every big government liberal program they propose, just like they did when Bush was president.

I thought the point of changing presidents was to actually change things….

Frederick Douglass

March 5th, 2012
5:22 pm

Romney’s Chilean shoeshine boy is spreading the reliable rumor among his peers, that Mitt has conceded the general election to Obama. Anything Romney does from now to November is just a thinly veiled sham.

MrLiberty

March 5th, 2012
5:23 pm

Father A. Long – Goldwater’s son endorces Ron Paul. Ron Paul is what the republican party should aspire to, just like Goldwater was.

RedHotPoker

March 5th, 2012
5:25 pm

have you seen the online cartoon with the Pope, in full regalia and jewels, proclaiming that you should not seek materialism … too funny.

MrLiberty

March 5th, 2012
5:26 pm

Frederick Douglass – If Romney gets the nomination, Obama certainly will win as Romney cannot carry the conservative vote, just like Newt and Rick cannot bring in any independents or democrats. Only Ron Paul has broad appeal because unlike his opponents and the president, he still cares about the constitution, a sound an constitutional foreign policy, and most importantly, civil liberties.

Michael

March 5th, 2012
5:27 pm

Georgia politics — I hear banjos.

Go President O

March 5th, 2012
5:29 pm

Ron Paul is a joke. He has no chance. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for President O. And a vote for any other Regressive wackjob is a waste of the cost of transportation to get to the polling station.

Obama/Biden 2012

Business Man

March 5th, 2012
5:34 pm

How about some full disclosure Jim? You could at least point out that the Landmark poll is done by a well known political consultant that represents Newt. There is no way you are not aware of that!

John from Cobb

March 5th, 2012
5:36 pm

Tied for the General election- IN GEORGIA? I will never believe another CNN poll-they must have had a lot of people hang up on them. ABO-Anybody But Obama!

Michael

March 5th, 2012
5:43 pm

Georgia a swing state? That’s a good one. Next the poll will say democrats will take the legislature (and not switch parties).

Proud Native Georgian

March 5th, 2012
5:46 pm

There are a lot of good, decent people who are conservatives, but they’ve allowed their once-proud GOP to be hijacked and dominated by people who, to so many liberals and moderates (and even to some other conservatives), as simply bizarre.

Think of the people who are making headlines: Karen Handel, Rush Limbaugh, Newt “moon-base” Gingrich, and Sarah Palin, who still enjoys a lovely, panoramic view of Russia from her house. Uber-wealthy Mitt Romney- who hasn’t had a real job in years other than a perpetual run for the White House- comes across as almost sensible by comparison.

Those decent Republicans out there- and I know there are many- need to take their party back from the ultra-right radicals and the goofy headliners while there remains a party worth salvaging.

Centrist

March 5th, 2012
5:47 pm

Business Man posted “How about some full disclosure Jim? You could at least point out that the Landmark poll is done by a well known political consultant that represents Newt. There is no way you are not aware of that!”

Earlier today he had a PPP poll that has Gingrich close to 50% of tomorrow’s GA vote. He also “forgot” to mention that it is a Democratic party poll. And soon we will see Insider Advantage polls that have a history of Democrat bias. Polls are meaningless until close to elections, and even many of them are purposely manipulated. Even averaging polls doesn’t work well because the outliers (in statistics, an outlier is an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data) so skew the results.

There are 422 delegates which are at stake tomorrow and Romney will likely will likely win half or more:

Romney: 200-250
Santorum: 90-120
Gingrich: 50-70
Paul: 20-30

Sink

March 5th, 2012
6:05 pm

It looks like the GOP candidates are not interested in really resolving problems in this country. They are more interested in defeating President Obama. How sad for GOP. How scary for the country.

Senior Citizen Kane

March 5th, 2012
6:13 pm

Surely everybody on this blog, hopefully including the author, realizes that this says more about the unreliability of polls than it does the real strength of the candidates, Jim, anybody else, want to bet a week’s pay against my house that Obama doesn’t get 48 percent of the vote in Georgia? Any takers?

Proud Native Georgian

March 5th, 2012
6:16 pm

Kane, it won’t be a week’s pay, maybe more like an hour or two, but Mitt Romney will bet you $10,000.

BRW

March 5th, 2012
6:18 pm

Invoking Lester Maddox on why the GOP candidates are so like clowns: “The problem with the Georgia prisons is found in the quality of the prisoners.”
So the clowns reflect the voters that apologize for them.

Senior Citizen Kane

March 5th, 2012
6:19 pm

No he won’t, Proud. He’s a lot smarter than that. Of course, my inartful wording probably should have said that Obama “gets” 48 percent. At any rate, I’m betting he doesn’t.

Senior Citizen Kane

March 5th, 2012
6:21 pm

Wow, Obama supporters invoking Lester Maddox. That has to be a first.

BRW

March 5th, 2012
6:26 pm

Wisdom sometimes comes from the strangest places :)

Skip

March 5th, 2012
6:38 pm

He who is without sin should cast the first stone at Newt. Granted, he is far from perfect (maybe even farther than Clintonwas) but truly he is the only Republican candidate that can beat Obama (and the elite press) head to head.

Tyrone

March 5th, 2012
6:40 pm

Obama will not carry Georgia but he will carry the USA. Unfortunately!

Bill

March 5th, 2012
6:40 pm

I’m going to vote for Sunday beer & wine sales in my county. Might need to drink if one of these Regressives takes the WH.

Is this the change you wanted

March 5th, 2012
6:48 pm

Tealiban Party – Newt and his ethic violations were that of Nancy Pelosi when the Republicans gained the house. These were all bogus charges that cost tax payers millions. Not one of them was true. Go read your facts and then see how down and dirty the democrats really are. I really have a problem with people spreading false facts without checking them out first. NEWT WAS NOT FOUND GUILTY OF A SINGLE VIOLATION. The news (the dems news) just wont report the real facts.

GO NEWT