Under the headline “America hates Newt Gingrich,” The Examiner’s Conn Carroll takes a look at the favorable/unfavorable numbers of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich:
Fox News, 1/12-1/14:
Obama, fav/unfav, 51%/46%, +5
Romney, fav/unfav, 45%/38%, +7
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 27%/56%, -29CBS/NYT, 1/12-1/17:
Obama, fav/unfav, 38%/45%, -7
Romney, fav/unfav, 21%/35%, -14
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 17%/49%, -32PPP, 1/13-1/17:
Obama, app/dis, 47%/50%, -3
Romney, fav/unfav, 35%/53%, -18
Gingrich, fav/unfav, 26%/60%, -34
He concludes, “America does not love Romney, but boy do they hate Newt.”
The fact that Gingrich is not viewed favorably by most Americans doesn’t surprise me. It’s why I never expected him to actually run for president, much less emerge as the last remaining alternative to Romney.
What’s actually more interesting here is the wide disparity between the results of the three surveys, all taken at essentially the same time. Obama’s favorables range from 38 to 51? Romney’s from 21 to 45? That doesn’t exactly make me confident in the usefulness of these numbers.
The Fox poll was conducted by telephone with 906 registered voters. CBS/NYT is a hodgepodge of 1154 voters, 1021 of whom are registered, 430 Republican primary voters, 367 Democratic primary voters, and 302 registered Republicans; presumably, it was also a telephone survey. PPP “surveyed 700 American voters” using “automated telephone interviews.” So, they’re all somewhat different in terms of methodology.
