South Carolina Poll Shows Narrowing Window for Romney Foes

As in most surveys over the past year, Romney continues to run better among more secular and less ideological voters. Among South Carolina voters who don't identify as evangelical Christians, the survey shows him spiking to 41 percent, more than double his nearest competitor, and up 15 percentage points since December. He's also at 41 percent among likely primary voters who don't identify with the tea party. That's also double his nearest competitor, and up 10 percentage points from December.

Perhaps even more impressive, though, were his gains among the groups that have been most skeptical of him. In 2008, Romney won just 11 percent of self-identified evangelicals in the South Carolina primary; last Tuesday he carried just 14 percent of them in the Iowa caucuses. But the CNN/Time poll shows him rising to 35 percent among South Carolina evangelicals -- roughly double his showing in December. Almost as encouraging for Romney: the remainder of evangelicals splinters among Rick Santorum (22 percent), Newt Gingrich (20 percent) and Ron Paul (15 percent).

Among tea party supporters, it's a similar story. Romney has moved up to 32 percent, more than double his 14 percent in December. The rest of them again fragment: 23 percent for Gingrich, 20 percent for Santorum, 13 percent for Paul.

The big loser since the December poll, of course, was Gingrich, who fell from 43 percent to 18 percent overall. His decline was even more precipitous among tea party supporters: from 53 percent to 23 percent. Among evangelicals, Gingrich tumbled from 45 percent to 20 percent.

For Santorum, the survey offers a mixed message. On the one hand, it shows how much his strong performance in Iowa is likely to boost him everywhere -- he's up from 4 percent in South Carolina in December to 19 percent now. But it doesn't suggest he's established a distinctive identity as a champion for the constituencies that his message and persona appear to be targeted towards: He polls only slightly higher among evangelicals than non-evangelicals, and almost exactly the same among voters with and without a college education.

Most important, Romney leads him comfortably among all four groups. It's difficult to imagine Santorum will dislodge Romney among upscale and secular voters: If he can't unify blue-collar and culturally conservative Republicans, he'll have little chance of advancing beyond his Iowa beachhead.

If the survey offers any silver lining for those chasing Romney, it's that his support stands at well below 50 percent with almost every group, and closer to one-third among the most conservative factions -- evangelicals and tea party backers. That suggests there might still be an opportunity to build a more conservative coalition against him, if someone can unify that vote.

But that remains a huge challenge in a field still crowded with alternatives to the front-runner. Compounding the problem is that next Tuesday's New Hampshire result now seems destined to boost Romney and Paul much more than Santorum, Gingrich or Rick Perry, who have the best chance of rallying South Carolina conservatives. One more complication: South Carolina's elevated 9.9 percent unemployment rate may encourage more social conservatives than usual to vote on economic issues, which are stronger terrain for Romney than cultural questions.

And then there's the weight of history. Though South Carolina is correctly viewed as a very conservative state, it has consistently bent toward the establishment choice in its GOP presidential primaries -- from George H.W. Bush in 1988 to Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008. Even the most ardent socially conservative voters in South Carolina have often displayed a more pragmatic streak than in other states (particularly Iowa); John McCain, for instance, carried more than a quarter of South Carolina evangelical Christians last time. McCain won a decisive plurality victory in South Carolina because the right divided; today, Romney looks like he's on a trajectory to do the same thing, while potentially reaching somewhat more deeply into the right than the Arizona Senator did.

South Carolina may be the last stand for conservatives hoping to stop Romney because if he wins there, he will become a commanding favorite 10 days later in Florida (where he is already deploying his financial advantage to advertise on television.) Romney's record still offers plenty of targets for opponents looking to peel away conservative voters. But the new CNN/Time South Carolina poll underscores how urgent it is for Romney's rivals to find an effective line of argument against him before he solidifies his support in the state that has correctly picked the winner in each of the past five contested Republican nomination fights.