Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin received a boost to their presidential ambitions this week as voters who previously backed Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump went in search of alternatives now that each of the men has withdrawn from the presidential race, according to a Suffolk University poll released this week.
The poll was originally conducted before Huckabee and Trump withdrew, but the pollster went back to respondents who had initially supported those two, and found them breaking largely in favor of Romney and, to a slightly lesser extent, Palin.
In the first permutation, Romney led all GOPers at 17%, followed by Huckabee (15%), Palin (10%), Gingrich (9%), Rudy Giuliani (6%) and Trump (5%.)
Among those who switched their votes — not every person who initially supported Trump or Huckabee was reached a second time — 29% went to Romney, and 16% leapt to Palin. Ten percent also switched their support to Rudy Giuliani, while 20% said they had no second choice yet
After factoring in the results from the callbacks, Romney was at 20%, Palin rose to 12%, Gingrich was at 9%, and Giuliani came in at 7%.
Those upticks could be short lived rather than long-term indicators of what the loss of Huckabee and Trump will mean for the GOP field. Romney and Palin were perhaps the two most high profile names left on the list — along with Giuliani and Gingrich — so the boost may be due in part name recognition.
The Suffolk poll was conducted May 10-17 among 1,070 likely voters nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.0%.
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