Could Romney find a way to win in Alabama?

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Don't look now, but Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney might just find a way to win next Tuesday's Alabama primary - and in doing so help put to rest lingering concerns about his appeal to highly religious and highly conservative Southern Republican voters.

A telephone poll out Wednesday from Alabama State University's Center for Leadership and Public Policy showed Rick Santorum leading in the state with 23 percent support. But Romney came in at 19 percent - within the poll's five-point margin of error. Newt Gingrich was in third with 14 percent support, and 30 percent were undecided. (The survey did not ask voters if they support Ron Paul.)

The poll of 470 likely voters was taken over four days last week, ending on March 1; it does not reflect any possible boost Romney might have received from Super Tuesday, when Romney won six out of ten states. Thomas Vocino, the executive director of the Center for Leadership and Public Policy at Alabama State University, said it shows that Romney is "within striking distance."

"If he has momentum coming out of Super Tuesday and he can afford a large media buy he could possibly win the state," said Vocino. "He also has going that a former governor has endorsed him [Bob Riley] and he's gotten the endorsement of the largest newspaper in the state, the Birmingham News."

Romney may already be getting that momentum: A separate telephone survey of 592 likely voters from the Capital Survey Research Center, taken between Monday and Wednesday and thus partially after the Super Tuesday results came in, shows Romney in the lead in Alabama, with 30 percent support. He is followed by Gingrich at 25 percent, Santorum at 20 percent and Paul at 6 percent. Romney's lead is just outside the poll's four-point margin of error.

Romney's backers are clearly sensing an opportunity: Restore our Future, the well-funded Super PAC backing Romney, is now airing advertisements in Alabama, among them the attack ad "Values." A Republican consultant told CNN that the super PAC has bought more than $2 million in advertising time in Alabama and the other southern state holding a primary on Tuesday, Mississippi.

Appearing on WAPI radio in Birmingham on Thursday morning, Romney acknowledged that Alabama is an "away game" for him, but said he is "confident we're going to get some" of the state's 50 delegates, which are allocated proportionally.

Romney has held steady around 16-19 percent support in the Center for Leadership and Public Policy's surveys going back to February 2. Gingrich, meanwhile, has seen his support cut in half since the Feb. 2 poll, when he was at 27 percent. Santorum has gone the other way, rising from 9 percent then to 23 percent today.

According to Vocino, Santorum and Gingrich are taking votes from the same pool of voters, underlying the Santorum camp's argument that if Gingrich were to leave the race Santorum would take much of his support and be a stronger candidate against Romney.

"I am convinced that the level of support that Santorum is receiving is at Gingrich's expense," said Vocino.

A win in Alabama would offer Romney the basis to argue that he can win in the South, and potentially further an inevitability argument that would help him wrap up the nomination sooner than he would otherwise.

Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are campaigning in Alabama and Mississippi this week. The former House speaker, who won only his home state of Georgia on Tuesday, badly needs another victory that would help justify his continued presence in the race. Gingrich's campaign is describing the southern contests as must win, and he is likely to face renewed pressure to leave the race barring an unexpectedly strong showing next Tuesday.

In the 2008 Alabama Republican primary, 68 percent of voters were white evangelicals - a group that broke for Santorum and Gingrich in Tuesday's Southern primaries. Mike Huckabee won the state by four points over John McCain in the 2008 primary, which took place on Super Tuesday.

[joeyslaptop]

I graduated from college in 2009. During the years I spent in school, I dealt with health issues, got married, ran a small business, had three children with my wife, and supported our troops in Iraq through a long-term service project. It was not easy. But, I knew a winning job awaited college graduates - especially ones from a renowned business school like mine. I didn't graduate at the top of my class by any means, but I gained an awesome education and a deeper understanding about the economy, accounting, and the Bible along the way - enough to know that when I heard Obama talk about the economy - let's just say I could tell that he didn't know anything at all about the economy, business or Christianity. In fact, I was confident that I knew more about the economy than he did.

I became very scared for our country because Obama looked like he was going to be elected - and sure enough, when I graduated, jobs at the investment banks had dried up completely for fresh graduates. So, I was $70,000 in debt from a prestigious business school, had a family with three little kids to feed, and nowhere to work. I tried, but not even WalMart, Mc Donalds, or the grocery stores were hiring (even though they kept the "for hire" signs in the windows to make it look like business was going better than it really was). Rich people were even mowing their own lawns! Unemployment in my state was up to 15 percent!

Needless to say, between2009 and now, I have worked tons of temp jobs, odd jobs, and craigslist-type jobs to try to feed my family and to keep us off of government welfare. On a few occasions, we came very close to starving. If it wasn't for assistance from our church, I don't know if we would have survived. It seemed like every time I looked in the newspaper to find a job, I was reading about Obama playing golf again.

I worked the following jobs:

-Thrift store clerk and stock boy
-Made bread from home and sold it
-Loaded boxes and marshaled planes for UPS from 3AM to 8AM at PDX in the dead of winter
-Took an internship at a healthcare company
-Cleaned out rain gutters
-Did door-to-door sales (selling metal chimney toppers)
-Temp agency jobs
-Roofing labor and other construction
-anything else I could do that people would pay me for

So now, unemployment is still above 8 percent. The only reason that this number has fallen from 12 percent is because 1/4 of the people who are unemployed no longer qualify for unemployment (they've used it up). Many have stopped looking altogether and have resigned themselves to a life of rent assistance and food stamps. I have been on the front lines of the unemployment reality, and that's what I'm seeing. I was told in a home-buyer class today that 85 percent of the houses on the market in my state are short sales and foreclosures. I can't imagine that business has been this bad nation-wide since the Great Depression.

I can't wait for this mess to be over - and you can bet that I'm voting for Mitt Romney! He is the only presidential candidate who is presidential and who can get the job done. With our support, he'll take back the White House from the Socialists currently running it. He's pro family, pro life, pro-Jesus, pro constitution, and pro America. Vote with me for Mitt Romney for President.

[BlameRepublicanz]

Romney the spineless jellyfish will never be President...ever.

[dng888]

Newt has pointed out that Santorum was one of the biggest spenders in the Senate. Santorum holds the record for the biggest percentage loss in Pennsylvania's history for a Senate race (18%). His support of Arlen Specter was a complete betrayal of conservative Toomey. Santorum was a lobbyist before he ran for Congress and banked 4 million as a lobbyist after he lost his seat.
Romney has proven that he can get the Evangelical and Catholic vote. Romney is for religious freedom and can work with both sides of the aisles. Romney has a simple message insofar that he can provide an economy that is friendly to business in order to provide jobs and fix Obama's mess of an economy. He is strong on defense and will support Israel now while Obama is twiddling his thumbs. Go Mitt!

[nancy_naive]

Change his name to Rick Santorum.

[tvwatcher5345]

so unless the south votes for ron paul, their choice is a roman catholic or a mormon, this is going to be funny

[ProgressNow]

And a very liberal mormon at that!

[venusvegasvada]

Ahh, get a copy of Newt's GOPACK memo and start slinging foulness?

[ProgressNow]

Sure...he can spend $20 million and win by less than 1% of the vote.

[ProgressNow]

Sure...he can spend $20 million and win by less than 1% of the vote.

[thebob-bob]

Wow! Less than a third of the ever-dwindling voters who are willing to call themselves Republican will vote for Mitt!! Their enthusiasm for the frontrunner is underwhelming!

Obama 2012!!

[ProgressNow]

Well, they're well on their way to nominating the most liberal repub around from the most liberal state in the union... Tea party...you suck!!!! HAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! OBAMA 2012!!!!!!!!!

[sharkboy234]

Mitt Romney is in it to win it in Alabama and this could be over for now he clenched the nomination go Mitt Romney the plumber go Mitt Romney the plumber! mitt romney is the number one choice for the nomination Mitt romney will win in ALabama trust me!

[ProgressNow]

Talk about a run on sentence because you don't know how to punctuate and that means that you cant get a logical thought through to those that are trying to read what you're trying to tell them and if they cant understand it then what good was it to post it in the first place. OBAMA 2012!!!!!!!!