The tracking poll, taken between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15, shows Romney with 37 percent support. Tied for a distant second are former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 14 percent each, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 12 percent support.
The survey showed Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 5 percent support and Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race Monday and threw his support to Romney, with just two percent support.
Romney, the winner of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, has seen a steady, double-digit increase in national support since the January 3 caucuses. Gingrich, by contrast, has been in freefall, dropping from 37 percent support in December.
Santorum, who won the backing of a group of prominent social conservatives over the weekend, reached 18 percent support following his near-win in Iowa but has since dropped to 14 percent.
A new CNN/ORC International poll, also released Monday, showed Romney and Paul statistically tied with President Obama in a general election matchup. Mr. Obama was favored over Santorum by six points and over Gingrich by nine points.
Romney has edged up since a Post-ABC poll in mid-December before the campaign’s first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, boosted by a sharp increase in his perceived electability and a steep falloff in national support for Gingrich.
With his rivals closely bunched and well behind him, Romney has obvious advantages, reinforcing an aura of inevitability that surrounds his candidacy. Nearly six in 10 Republicans see him as the party’s best shot at defeating Obama.
Just a month ago, Romney held a 10-point advantage over Gingrich as the most electable candidate in the field. That lead has swelled to a whopping margin of 57 percent to 10 percent. In the intervening weeks, millions of dollars in negative ads hit the former speaker in Iowa as his support plummeted there and nationally. Gingrich, who declared late last year that he was likely to be the nominee, finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Overwhelmingly, Republicans expect Romney to be the party’s nominee. Even about two-thirds of those who do not support him for the nomination see him as the one most likely to be atop the party’s presidential ticket.
Romney also has consolidated support on issue No. 1: the economy. For the first time in the campaign, he has a double-digit lead over his rivals when it comes to dealing with economic issues; he beats everyone on this measure by 2 to 1. And he is up 13 points when it comes to handling the federal budget deficit. Exit polls in New Hampshire and Iowa showed overwhelming percentages of voters focused on these two issues.
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