Romney Coasting to Victory in New Hampshire

Polls of the Day: Mitt's cruising through the New England primary before a battle in the conservative hotbed of South Carolaaahna.

Tomorrow marks the New Hampshire Republican primary, and all signs point to Mitt Romney winning the second electoral contest of the race to be the party's presidential candidate. A slew of polls published in recent days uniformly show Romney with a commanding lead in the Granite State (home of the union's best state motto, "Live Free or Die"), helped in large part due to him being the former governor of neighbouring Massachusetts. Romney's lead varies from 15 percentage points to 24 depending on the poll, with libertarian and beloved congressional crank Ron Paul placing second in most polls, with between 15 and 20 per cent of New Hampshire voters' support. Jon Huntsman, the other former governor and Mormon in the race, is nipping at Paul's heels, but it looks next to impossible for Romney to lose this one after claiming first place in the Iowa caucuses last week.

Further helping Romney's case is a new Rasmussen poll that shows he's the only Republican candidate with a chance of knocking off Barack Obama in November. The poll of voters likely to cast ballots in the presidential election found that 53 per cent of respondents believed Romney was "likely" or "somewhat likely" to beat Obama. Rick Santorum, the socially conservative former senator from Pennsylvania, came in second behind Romney, with just more than 40 per cent of respondents thinking a Santorum victory over Obama is at least somewhat likely. Now, these results don't mean that the respondents would vote for Romney in November; rather, they point to Romney leading his field in "electability", that elusive quality of being broadly palatable and statesman-like enough to get a plurality of voters to cast ballots for a candidate. We'll find out just how true that holds for Romney after he's put through the wringer in the South Carolina primary slated for Jan. 19.