With two days left on the clock before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primaries, Iowa victor and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum has surged ahead of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for a possible third-place finish.
In a primary which has been Mitt Romney's to lose for well over a year, the largely independent voters of the Granite State are split on rewarding the majority of its delegates to their neighbor, the former governor of Massachusetts, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
While Romney has seen a two-point post-Iowa Caucus boost in polls, Santorum has seen the greatest surge from 3.5 percent before the caucus to 10.8 percent hours before the ABC News-Yahoo Republican Debate to be held in Manchester tonight.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who defied all conventional Beltway wisdom to come out of Iowa with one of three proverbial tickets forward, is the second choice of those polled, leading Santorum by double-digits with 20.2 percent as the frontrunner for an anti-Romney candidacy.
Unlike Santorum, Paul has seen steady growth in the state for weeks, the beneficiary of both Gingrich's Iowa implosion and a general reluctance of Republican voters to immediately hand the nomination to the more moderate Romney.
A new campaign ad released by Paul in South Carolina seeks to position the congressman as the conservative standard-bearer against Santorum's Washington record, painting the Pennsylvanian as "a corporate lobbyist and Washington politician" with "a record of betrayal."
Santorum responds, however, Paul's foreign policy positions make him a dangerous choice for president.
--Brandon De Hoyos, Guide to IM
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