Perry in weak 5th place in New Hampshire poll; Romney holds strong lead

[w8liftinglady]

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/10/perry-in-weak-5th-place-in-new.html

Very bad news for Gov. Rick Perry in New Hampshire.

He's tied for five place with just 4 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, even though an overwhelming majority of voters (84 percent) are familiar with him.

Mitt Romney, long the front-runner in New Hampshire, sits solidly atop the field with 38 percent, according to the survey from Harvard University's Institute of Politics and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

But the real disappointment for Perry is that he is nowhere close to being the main alternative to Romney.

Businessman Herman Cain is in second with 20 percent, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 13 percent and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 5 percent. Perry's 4 percent puts him in a tie with Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and President Obama's ambassador to China.

[sharp_stick]

1. Michelle Bachman's gonna get mad

she's supposed to be the candidate fighting for the margin of error and she doesn't like competitors.

[Lizzie Poppet]

3. What she should get is professional help.

Does it make me a bad person that I hope she doesn't, though? She's a really entertaining kind of crazy...and since she has zero chance of winning, I'm not worried that'll turn into a problem.

[customerserviceguy]

2. Perry was never expected to do much in NH

He probably figures that he's going to be in first place in Iowa, since Romney's not going to try to fight the fundies there, and similarly, Perry's not going to contest NH, since that's been Mitt's back yard for a while.

Perry figures that he'll run the table from SC on, except for a few Western states that still have a sizable minority of Mormons. Paul will always siphon off 10-20 percent of the vote in primary states, and considerably better than that in the caucus states. But Perry had better hope that Cain implodes before Iowa, or he's going to find himself in second or third place there.