Findings also show that Perry is more popular among Tea Party supporters than any other candidate as well.
Rick Perry's candidacy has attracted strong initial support from Republicans who identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement. Perry leads by 21 percentage points over the closest contenders among this group, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. Among Republicans who say they do not support the Tea Party movement, Romney and Perry are essentially tied.
These results are based on an Aug. 17-21 Gallup poll, which showed Perry overtaking Romney as the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination among all Republicans nationwide.
The poll finds that 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, with 36% saying they do not consider themselves supporters. Included among the group of Tea Party supporters is a smaller group -- representing 12% of Republicans -- who say they are "strong" supporters of the movement. Among this smaller group, Perry's lead is even greater, 46% to 16%, over Bachmann, with all other candidates in single digits.
In Gallup's July measurement of Republicans' nomination preferences, before Perry officially entered the race, Romney held a slight edge over Bachmann among Tea Party supporters, 29% to 23%. Romney led Paul by 25% to 16% among nonsupporters.
The breakdown is explained over at Gallup on the lead Perry holds over Romney on the Government spending and business and economy issues, but there is no doubt that 3 weeks into his official campaign, Perry has slid into the candidate of choice for many.
NRO explains why Perry is popular with those that recognize his name already and why he will become more popular as more match him up against Romney and others.
• As “America’s jobs governor,” Perry is a one-man antidote to Obama’s venomous policies, which have held unemployment above 9 percent for 25 of the last 27 months. Across all 50 states, between June 2009 and June 2011, the Dallas Federal Reserve calculates that 49.9 percent of America’s net new jobs arose in Texas. July was its eleventh straight month of payroll expansion, with 29,300 Texans finding work. Nearly eleven years into Perry’s governorship, Texas inarguably is No. 1 in job growth.
During Romney’s single four-year term, however, the U.S. Labor Department ranked Massachusetts No. 47 in job growth. Employment increased just 0.9 percent between January 2003 and January 2007. At that time, U.S. job growth was roughly 5 percent, reports WSJ.com’s Brett Arends. Romney did keep Massachusetts ahead of Ohio and Michigan — two Rust Belt job sieves — and Louisiana, crushed by Katrina.
Read the whole thing.
Job growth and the economy are going to be two of the most important issues for the 2012 GOP nomination and for the 2012 presidential election and Perry stands far above all other GOP candidates as well as above Barack Obama on records alone.
Unless unemployment is drastically reduced and/or the economy grows at an impossible rate over the next year, Obama has nothing to campaign on except his speeches which are nothing like those he charmed voters with in 2008, because now there is a record behind him and it is ugly.
Obama's signature issue, Obamacare is still opposed by the majority of Americans and his unprecedented spending spending spree and deficit increases in the last two and half years have failed to stimulate the economy or produce the job growth promised with unemployment still over 9.0 percent.
No doubt as more Americans, especially Independents, learn more and are able to compare Perry's record with everyone else in the field of candidates and Obama, Perry's national lead will increase.
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