There are a lot of potential stories to come out of the new national Gallup poll of Republican preferences for the GOP nomination, and other similar polls. You could focus on the horse race numbers. You could write that former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain has surged to a statistical tie with 18 percent support, with Mitt Romney at 20 percent. And you could write about Texas Gov. Rick Perry being in free fall — polling at just 15 percent, or less than half the 31 percent he was polling at just weeks ago. But to me, the biggest story, and what should be most worrying to Republicans, is how tepid support is for any of the candidates.
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In fact, Gallup lists polls of GOP nomination battles taken at this point in every pre-election year dating back to 1959, and over the past half century, no front-runner has ever polled as low as 20 percent.
It’s true that Sen. John McCain won the nomination despite polling at 16 percent this time four years ago and not being the frontrunner. But he lost. In fact, every one of the above candidates who went on to win the presidency was polling at above 40 percent by this point of the race. Right now, the field is set, and there are three Republicans that can theoretically win the nomination. One is Perry, who managed to squander his front-runner status within about six weeks of first opening his mouth as a presidential candidate. Another is Cain, who remains untested, and will just now start to receive the scrutiny that accompanies being a contender. And finally there’s Romney, who is seen by political analysts as the most likely to win the nomination. Defenders of Romney argue that were he to become the nominee, suddenly, conservatives eager to show President Obama the door would line up behind Romney. But I’m not so sure. Conservative Romney skeptics might hold their noses and vote for him, but will they bang on doors, hang up signs, and make calls for him? Romney has been running for president for nearly five years and is well known, yet four out of five Republican voters don’t want him to be the nominee. That should be alarming to the Republican Party.
