PPP Polling director skeptical of predicted Romney win in Maine.
Maine is the first of the Republican contests we haven't conducted a pre-election poll for. The main reason for that is the lack of a single voting date. Caucuses have been held in the state over the course of the last week and that makes polling pretty much impossible- some folks have already voted, some haven't, etc. The other reasons we didn't poll it are exceptionally low turnout and the fact that the GOP race has undergone a fundamental shift from the start of Maine's voting period, when Mitt Romney was on the top of the world, and the end where we've now seen Rick Santorum take the lead nationally.
It's generally assumed Mitt Romney will win tomorrow, largely because it's another New England state, but I'm a little skeptical. We did 3 Maine Republican Presidential polls between October of 2010 and October of 2011. Here's what we found:
-Romney doesn't have great favorability numbers with Maine Republicans. He was at 51/37 when we polled in October and 47/31 when we polled in March. Those favorability numbers right around the 50% mark are pretty comparable to what we found for him in Minnesota and Missouri last weekend, where of course he got crushed. Maine GOPers are definitely not in love with Romney.
-Romney never led in any of the 3 Maine Republican polls we conducted. He was 2nd behind Herman Cain in October, 4th behind Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin in March, and 2nd behind Sarah Palin in October of 2010. All 3 of those polls made it clear Maine Republicans were looking for a more conservative alternative to Romney. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum don't appear to have much or any organization in Maine and a lot of Maine's caucuses had already been held before the Santorum surge began though, so I don't know if that desire for an alternative will really end up showing in tomorrow's results.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/maine/