Mike Huckabee leads in new PPP 2012 Republican National Primary Poll

Public Policy Polling 2012 Republican National Primary Poll

        * Mike Huckabee  24%
        * Sarah Palin  14%
        * Mitt Romney  14%
        * Newt Gingrich  11%
        * Tim Pawlenty  8%
        * Ron Paul  7%
        * Mitch Daniels  4%
        * John Thune  1%

PPP surveyed 515 usual national Republican primary voters from January 14th to 16th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4.3%.

I found these two key paragraphs in the data to be of particular interest:

In November, Huckabee was back at 16% behind Palin’s 21%, Gingrich’s 19%, and Romney’s 18%,and Pawlenty was tied with Paul at 5%, followed by Thune’s 3% and Daniels’ 2%. The movement for Pawlenty is within the margin of error, but he is usually in the low single digits in any national or state-level polls, interchangeable with Thune and Daniels.

In the last two months, Huckabee has leapt from 14% to 25% with the three-quarters of Republicans who call themselves conservative. Gingrich has done the reverse, declining from 23% to 11% with them, while Palin has fallen back to 16% from 24%, and Romney holds steady at 14%. But Romney, who usually makes up for weakness among conservatives with strength among moderates, has gone from a 25-20 lead over Huckabee with centrists to second place at 18% behind Huckabee’s consistent 20%.

 

Will Huckabee use this data and make a quick decision to embark on a presidential run?  Not so fast, as Huckabee indicated in his interview with Fox News host Martha Maccallum :

"Polls are nothing more than a snapshot in time...I would rather be polled at the top than the bottom..and it's very complimentary but it does not necessarily equate into a mandate to run or foretelling of an election."

That being said, the polls that have come out this week, NBC/WSJ, WP/ABC and PPP,  clearly show that Huckabee has the best chance of becoming the Republican nominee.

Huckabee 21% average (18%, 21%, 24%)

Romney 16.7% average (19%, 17%, 14%)

Palin 15.7% average (14%, 19%, 14%)

Gingrich 10% average (10%, 9%, 11%)