Poll Shows Romney With Wide Lead in New Hampshire

Tomorrow, Romney is scheduled to address religion in public life and his Mormon faith, but few New Hampshire voters are weighing his religion: Nearly nine in 10 said Romney's Mormonism does not make a difference in their votes.

At this point, Romney holds the edge among most voter groups, leading among both men and women, across age and education categories and among Protestants and Catholics alike. He is winning both Republicans and independents, who were crucial to McCain in 2000. Among conservatives, Romney has an advantage of better than 2 to 1 over his closest competitor (39 percent to McCain's 17 percent).

The poll also highlights the challenges facing others who may be dependent on a strong showing in New Hampshire to keep their candidacies moving forward.

Giuliani's distant third-place standing represents a growing problem for a candidate who continues to lead the national polls, although by narrowing margins. He began television advertising in New Hampshire just before Thanksgiving, but the poll suggests that, so far at least, he has not gained ground.

Giuliani's advisers have long said he can sustain early losses and still capture the nomination with victories in Florida and many of the states holding primaries on Feb. 5. But Giuliani recently predicted a victory in New Hampshire.

McCain, who won the New Hampshire primary in 2000, picked up a potentially valuable endorsement over the weekend from the Manchester Union Leader, the state's most widely circulated newspaper. With a flagging Iowa campaign, McCain is again counting on New Hampshire to give his candidacy momentum heading to South Carolina, where that state's Republican voters will cast ballots on Jan. 19.

McCain's victory in 2000 was largely fueled by independent voters, who broke strongly for the senator, in contrast to self-identified Republicans, who preferred George W. Bush. In this poll, McCain does about the same among independents (19 percent) as he does among Republicans (21 percent).

Huckabee's emergence into the top tier in Iowa this year is also based on strong support from a particular segment: Christian conservatives. His more limited appeal in New Hampshire may reflect the vastly different GOP electorates in that state and in Iowa.

While 37 percent of likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers are evangelical Protestants, they make up only 15 percent of likely GOP voters in New Hampshire. Likely New Hampshire voters are also much less likely than their counterparts in Iowa to describe themselves as conservative and to attend weekly religious services. They are more than twice as likely to support legal abortion in most or all cases.

This telephone poll was conducted Nov. 29 to Dec. 3, among a random sample of 488 likely voters in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Error margins for subgroups are larger.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.