Mitt Romney atop fluid GOP race with 28%

For the third time in three months, Ohio Republicans have a new favorite in the GOP presidential race.


Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney overtook former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a new Buckeye State poll released tosday morning by Quinnipiac University.


Romney, according to the survey, leads the Republican field with 27 percent -- nine points ahead of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and 10 points ahead of Gingrich.


The general election, where President Barack Obama will meet the winner of the GOP nomination, figures to be a much closer contest. Quinnipiac found an Obama-Romney match to be a statistical tie, putting Obama at 44 percent and Romney at 42 percent.


In the December poll, the Obama-Romney race was at 43-42 percent. Head to head, the incumbent Democrat leads Santorum 48-37, Gingrich 52-38 and Texas Rep. Ron Paul 48-39.


The results show the ever-changing dynamics of a battle in which Romney only recently has cemented his front-runner status by winning the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Before Gingrich topped last month's poll, Ohio Republicans favored businessman Herman Cain, who has since suspended his campaign.


Ginrich polls much more evenly with Romney among those Tea Party voters, with just a point separating the two men - 29 percent favor Romney and 28 percent support Gingrich.


As this and other polls have noted throughout the contest, the lion's share of voters - 74 percent - say they could still change their minds about whom to support - and so the race remains fluid.


This poll was conducted by telephone from January 12-17, 2012 among 1,154 adults nationwide. 1,021 interviews were conducted with registered voters and 340 with voters who said they plan to vote in a Republican primary. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters could be plus or minus three points and five points for the sample of Republican primary voters. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.