It didn’t take long for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to claim the top spot in Iowa polling last month after his speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit. Now, with Mitt Romney’s exit from the race official, Walker has claimed the top spot in New Hampshire as well. Up to this point, Romney had been topping the polls in New Hampshire for several months whenever his name was included in the mix.
Report from the Washington Times:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leads a host of potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders in a new poll in the early presidential state of New Hampshire out Wednesday.
Mr. Walker leads the NH1 automated poll, conducted Feb. 2-3, with 21.2 percent of the vote, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 14.4 percent, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 8.3 percent, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 8.2 percent. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Walker managed to ride a well-received performance at last month’s “Iowa Freedom Summit” into a place atop a recent Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll in the Hawkeye State among like caucus-goers there. He is scheduled to attend a GOP event in New Hampshire next month.
A NH1 “pulse poll” taken two weeks ago, prior to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s announcement that he would not run for president in 2016, had Mr. Romney well ahead at 29 percent, with Mr. Bush at 11 percent and Mr. Walker at 8 percent.
As noted, Romney was ruling the roost in New Hampshire sitting at 29% just two weeks ago. With Romney’s exit, roughly half of his supporters have went to Walker, another ten to fifteen percent to Jeb Bush, and the rest split among the others. Many candidates can appeal well in Iowa (Mike Huckabee), or appeal well in New Hampshire (Rand Paul), but few can appeal to both constituencies.
