Politics

Cain generates most enthusiasm among voters, according to Gallup poll

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
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Businessman and likely presidential candidate Herman Cain may not be all that well known among Republicans, but those who know him really like him, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

In a relatively diffuse Republican presidential field, where a number of the candidates have limited name recognition among primary voters, Gallup has created a metric called ‘positive intensity,’ which measures the candidate’s favorability rating among the people who know him or her.

Cain, who only has a 29 percent name recognition according to Gallup, has a positive intensity score of 24, higher than any other candidate that Gallup polls. Michele Bachmann has the second highest score of 21.

Other more well known candidates, like Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich, whose names are familiar to over 80 percent of Republicans, fare less well in positive intensity. Sarah Palin gets a score of 16, Romney gets 14, and Gingrich gets 13.

It’s worth noting that one’s positive intensity score has not yet transferred to the polls. Romney won the trial heat that Gallup conducted between March and April (after reallotting votes cast for Huckabee and Trump to the respondent’s second choice candidate). Cain received less than 0.5 percent of the vote.

Gallup suggests that at this point, there is “no clear front-runner.” The race seems likely to shift as candidates enter or drop out of the race, and as the other candidates become more well known to the voters.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, performed well in the first primary debate in South Carolina and was declared the winner by a Frank Luntz focus group conducted immediately after. The performance seems to have helped him substantially – he is now a top tier candidate in the most recent Daily Caller/ConservativeHome presidential primary tracking poll.