JACKSON, Miss., March 9 (UPI) -- Polls ahead of next week's Mississippi Republican Party primary indicate a tight race between front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
In a March 7-8 American Research Group poll of 600 likely Republican primary voters in Mississippi, 35 percent said they'd vote for Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker from Georgia, while 31 percent said they would support Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, in Tuesday's primary. Twenty percent of those polled said they'd vote for former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and 7 percent said they'd support U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
A March 8 Rasmussen telephone survey of 750 likely Republican primary voters in Mississippi, indicated Romney has the most support -- with 35 percent of the vote over Gingrich and Santorum, who each drew 27 percent. Paul garnered 6 percent of likely votes in the Rasmussen survey.
Across the 10 previous polls conducted by both pollsters, ARG says it is the more accurate predictor of a winner, using a measure of polling accuracy by Martin, Traugott and Kennedy.
