TAMPA, Fla. – Two new robopolls, and some anecdotes from a third, are cooking up our next narrative: Newt Gingrich solidly leading in the Florida primary. In this corner, with 557 likely voters, it’s Insider Advantage, which gives Gingrich a 34.2-26.6 lead over Mitt Romney. In that corner, with 770 likely voters, it’s Rasmussen, which puts Gingrich up 41-32. In some other corner, maybe in the condo across the street, Public Policy Reporting keeps tweeting that it shows a Newt-Mitt tie.
These are odd polls, though.
- In Insider Advantage, Newt earns 42.8 percent of black voters, a solid majority; Ron Paul earns 41.5 percent of Hispanics, whom unlike Gingrich has done basically no immigration-policy politicking.
- In Rasmussen, Romney leads by 11 points among voters who’ve already cast ballots. Gingrich leads by 12 among the rest. But here’s the weirdness: Romney has a 77 percent favorable rating, and Gingrich’s rating is only 69 percent. This is what the geeks call an “intensity gap.”
