Gallup: Romney 14% Palin 11% McCain 7% Scott Brown 4% Huckabee 3% Gingrich 3%

[Mr. Morden]

New national poll from Gallup, polling on the 2012 GOP presidential nomination:



Note that it's an open ended question, where they don't prompt you with a list of candidate names.  That's why it includes McCain and Scott Brown.

Also:

[Beet]

Polls at this point mean very little.

[Eraserhead]

Huckabee at only 3% doesn't make sense.

[Mr. Morden]

Huckabee at only 3% doesn't make sense.

Remember this is unprompted.  The poll respondent has to come up with the name on his own.  "Huckabee" is a long name to have to remember. 

But no, seriously, the R2000 poll also had Huckabee in single digits (though at 7%):

http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2010/1/31/US/437

Yet he still does well in the general election matchups with Obama, according to PPP.  Weird.

[Jensen]

So what they are basically saying is that their absolutely no consensus and that the Republican Party is in a mess right now? Who knew?

[TheGreatOne]

I wish people would announce earlier so we could have alittle bit of fun now.  Polls are useless at this stage. 

[Psychic Octopus]

McCain at 7%?

LOL

[xavier110]

WHERE IS GARY JOHNSON!?!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pbrower2a]

Huckabee at only 3% doesn't make sense.

Palin at 11% doesn't make much sense, either -- for the opposite reason.

I think that she would lose to Obama by a 65-35 margin and about a 500-40 margin of electoral votes.

[Poundingtherock]

The difference between this poll and the Kos/R2K poll is that R2K only polled Republicans while this poll is comprised of a sample of almost 40% independents.

You can say one has too conservative/Republican of a sample and the other two moderate/independent.

The former favors Palin (hence, her 5-point lead) while the latter favors Romney (hence, his 3-point lead).

[TheGreatOne]

I think this poll better gauges who voters would select during the election.  There are clearly more hardcore supporters of Romney and Palin.  However, the Scott Brown number is probably just a result of his high profile victory in Massachussettes

[prestontakata]

Honestly, could Scott Brown be considering a presidential run? It would have only been around three years from when he was just a state senator, and no offence, but something about Mitt Romney just rubs me the wrong way. There's a few people in this poll that I doubt will run, and some that I think will, which are excluded. Any ideas of why Bobby Jindal is so low?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

14% is rather low for first place. And LOL at the 7% for McCain.

[Poundingtherock]

Keep in mind though that Brady won the Illinois GOP primary with 20% of the vote.  We may see a similar dynamic in the 2012 GOP primary.