is under way right now in des moines. it s a campaign event for republican congressman ron paul of texas who you see speak there. the two latest polls out of iowa show congressman paul in first place in the ppp poll and second place in the cnn poll. more on that in a moment. the breaking news tonight is ron paul appears to have scored a bit of a coup in his effort to win iowa. shortly before dr. paul took the stage there, in des moines tonight, an iowa republican state senator who s named kent sorensen was introduced to the ron paul supporting crowd. up until tonight mr. sorensen had been serving as an iowa state co-chair for the michele bachmann campaign. the reason he was being introduced at a ron paul ro rally was to announce he s switching sides. tonight s been tough for me. i ve been serving as michele bachmann s state chair over the last year. and while michele has fought tremendously for my conservative
asked if it s a good idea for iowans to vote rogue and campaign for her on tuesday. we ve had no response from her office. hope springs eternal. we got a second round of polling out of iowa today from cnn and time magazine. like the ppp poll i just described, this date to did come out today. in some cases, these were iowa voters being polled before the christmas holiday. it s being released on the same day. in some cases, these questions were asked earlier than the ppp poll. while the ppp poll had ron paul first and mitt romney second, this one has the top two reversed. mitt romney in first and ron paul in second with 25% and 22% of the vote respectively. that interestingly reflects a five-point gain for each of them since the last time this รง cnn/ time poll was done. where are they getting the five points each from? well, again, look at newt gingrich.
first post-christmas iowa polling. so if you want a snap shot of what the race is like in iowa since the holiday this weekend, these are the first numbers we ve got on that. as you can see here, the ron paul surge in iowa appears to be holding steady or even getting better. this is the poll out from public policy polling. they re putting ron paul as the front-runner in iowa. holding a four-point lead over mitt romney. this is the second straight ppp poll in iowa that s put ron paul in the lead. also of note from this poll, look at newt gingrich. newt gingrich has fallen to 13% in this poll. which puts him in third place. over the last 3 1/2 weeks in this poll, newt gingrich has gone 27% in iowa on december 5th, from 27% to 13% now. that is a 14-point drop in 3 weeks. here s another headline out of this poll, though. look who comes in last place in the ppp poll. former louisiana governor buddy roemer. there in last place.