Newt Gingrich may be the new front-runner in the Republican presidential race as the Iowa caucuses approach, but the latest poll by the
Des Moines Register indicates that more than 70 percent of likely state voters have not yet made a final decision.
The poll released Sunday shows the former House speaker and Texas Rep. Ron Paul have both overtaken former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa four weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses. But with so many likely voters still up for grabs, other GOP candidates say they still have plenty of room — and time — to move up.
“I think now as they look at Speaker Gingrich’s record, as they look at Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, I have no doubt that people will come back home on Jan. 3 and vote for me,” Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said in an interview Sunday with the Register.
The Register poll shows that if the likely caucus voters had to choose today Gingrich would be in first place with 25 percent, followed by Paul with 18 percent, Romney at 16 percent, and Bachmann at 8 percent.
But with 70 percent of likely caucus voters still basically undecided, the field could easily shift again — as it usually does every four years just before Iowa holds the first in the nation vote to determine who the presidential nominees will be.
In an interview with the Register, Matt Gronewald, an Iowa spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said that even a month out the polls don’t really reflect what the reality is in terms of grass-roots support.
He said Perry, who registered only 6 percent support in the latest poll, hopes to attract some more attention with an upcoming statewide bus tour to be announced in a few days.
“We’ve got a plan, and we’re going to continue to execute it,” Gronewald told the paper. “We’re not really looking at polls right now. We’re looking at the steady and accelerated increase in the number of precinct leaders that we’ve been bringing on every single day.”