Michele Bachmann has taken a four-point lead over Mitt Romney in Iowa, according to a poll released today by The Iowa Republican news organization.
The poll has good news for Tim Pawlenty, too — he’s moved into a tie for third place, and he has the second-highest favorability spread in the race (behind Bachmann).
Bachmann received 25 percent support in the poll to Romney’s 21 percent. Pawlenty clocked in with 9 percent.
Bachmann’s lead is just within the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error, but it’s still the first Iowa poll that shows the surging candidate leading the national front-runner.
Her lead balloons among those who consider themselves attentive to the race: she leads Romney 35 percent to 18 percent. Pawlenty received 8 percent with those voters.
Seventy-six percent of the poll’s 500 respondents give Bachmann a favorable rating, while only 11 percent have an unfavorable view of the Minnesota Congresswoman. Her 65 point spread leads everyone, but Pawlenty is in second with a 48 point spread.
While it’s only one poll, it still comes as good news for both Minnesotans in the race. It shows Bachmann’s early surge is continuing in the state where she announced her candidacy and that Pawlenty’s time and money campaigning there is finally showing dividends.
We know she’s stridently surging, lockstep with Grover, ahead in Iowa, armed with all sorts of weird pledges to the latest fundamentalist ideologies; yet one might wonder what her Minnesota poll numbers would be…hmmmm…It would be great for her to hold a rally at the U of MN…Run, Shelley, Run! You’re the best show on the road!