The New Hampshire-based American Research Group polls South Carolina for the first time since Huckabee said he wouldn’t make the race. The results, with trends:
Mitt Romney - 25% (+7)
Sarah Palin - 16% (+6)
Michele Bachmann - 13% (+8)
Herman Cain - 10% (+9)
Rick Perry - 6% (+6)
Rudy Giuliani - 6% (+2)
Newt Gingrich - 3% (-6)
Rick Santorum - 2% (+1)
Ron Paul - 2% (+1)
Buddy Roemer - 2% (+2)
Gary Johnson registers only as an asterisk, meaning fewer than 1 percent of voters mentioned his name. But Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman just have dashes.
“If there’s a dash, that means no one chose that candidate,” says ARG president Dick Bennett. “So, no one chose Pawlenty or Huntsman.”
The good news: According to Nate Silver, ARG is one of the least accurate pollsters in the business, better only than Insider Advantage and the atrocious Zogby Interactive. So the barren Pawlenty and Huntsman numbers are probably outliers. That still means that Cain and Bachmann are lapping them.
