Public Policy Polling finds that where Tim Pawlenty does best--three midwestern states, including his home state of Minnesota--Romney does worst:
The 18 state level polls we released over the last week on the 2012 GOP nomination contest confirmed what we already knew- this thing is about as wide open as it could be.
Averaged across the states we looked at Mitt Romney gets 19.5%, Sarah Palin gets 17.9%, Mike Huckabee gets 17.1%, and Newt Gingrich gets 15.7%. That's about as close as it could be among the front runners, and the fact that the biggest winner with 19.6% was someone else/undecided makes it clear that there's plenty of room for someone outside the current top tier of potential candidates to become the GOP standard bearer. ...
Tim Pawlenty hurts Mitt Romney. The three states where Pawlenty had his highest levels of support were also the three where Romney had his lowest level of support. In Minnesota where Pawlenty got 19% Romney was at just 11%, in Wisconsin where Pawlenty got 8% Romney only got 12%, and in Illinois where Pawlenty got 8% Romney also got only 11%.
It makes sense that Pawlenty, a sober-minded governor with an 'A' rating on fiscal issues from the Cato Institute, would cut into Romney's base of support, but the candidate that wins still must score an early primary win and Minnesota, Wisconsin, an dIllinois Of course, the most important takeaway is that the race is wide open at this point. The early contests matter most in my opinion.