Gallup

Rick Santorum, who trailed Mitt Romney by 20 points eight days ago, has now taken the lead in Gallup’s national polling.  In the Gallup poll released on February 8, Romney led Santorum by the tally of 37 to 17 percent. In the current Gallup poll, Santorum has moved into the lead — 32 to 31 percent.

Yesterday I pointed out that "February 7 could prove to have been Super Tuesday if it turns out to be a key inflection point in the campaign."  Two indications, I wrote, of such an inflection point would be "if Santorum now passes Newt Gingrich in national Republican surveys" and if he "continues to do better than Gingrich (and than Romney?) in poll match-ups against President Obama."

Last Monday, Gallup’s national 5-day polling (taken from January 11-15) showed Mitt Romney leading his nearest competitors in the Republican presidential field (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum) by a colossal 23 percentage points — 37 to 14 percent.

Gallup chief Frank Newport said that Mitt Romney's support is "collapsing" and that everything is within the realm of possibilities in this Republican primary. “We have seen more movement, more roller coaster kind of effect this year than any other Republican primary in our history of tracking,” Newport said, according to TPM. “I think anything is possible. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility if Romney recovers. We’ll wait and see.”

With the first two presidential nominating contests under his belt, Mitt Romney is surging nationally among registered Republicans.

According to the latest Gallup poll, support for Newt Gingrich has dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent in just the course of a week. He still maintains a comfortable lead over Romney, whose support has held steady at 22 percent in Gallup's poll. However, the rapid drop suggests that maybe some of the attacks on Gingrich have taken their toll.

A new poll from Gallup today finds that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents find Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney "acceptable" nominees for the GOP. For Gingrich, 62 percent of those polled said the former House speaker was an acceptable Republican nominee, while 54 percent said the same for Romney. The remaining six Republicans, including former candidate Herman Cain, were deemed "not acceptable" candidates for the party's nomination.

According to Gallup, Barack Obama's quarterly approval hit an all-time low in the president's eleventh quarter in office at 41 percent.

Two new polls of Republicans and those who lean Republican show a sizable number of likely voters remain undecided on the 2012 presidential race.

Your chart of the day:

Earlier this morning, I noted that for the first time more Americans had an unfavorable view of the President than a favorable one. Well, here's some more bad news from the latest Gallup poll that's likely to reverberate around the White House:

According to the Gallup daily tracking poll, President Barack Obama hit his lowest monthly job approval rating last month, including his lowest rating among whites, Hispanics, and blacks.