Romney Leads the GOP Pack – For Now
Generally, at this stage of the game, it’s mostly about name recognition, and Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, is the leader in the race to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2016.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey asked Likely Republican Voters to choose among nine of the early Republican wannabes if their state primary were held right now, and Romney earns 24% support. Three candidates are closely grouped together for second place: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 13%, retired neurosurgeon and conservative columnist Ben Carson with 12% of the vote and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at 11%.
Earning single-digit support are Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (7%), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (7%), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (5%) and former Texas Governor Rick Perry (5%). Four percent (4%) of GOP voters like some other candidate, and 12% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 787 Likely Republican Voters was conducted on January 18-19, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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