Mitt Romney has said consistently that he’s not a candidate for president in 2016, and he certainly won’t be in New Hampshire next February: The deadline for all candidates to file for next winter’s presidential primary expired Friday.
However, if he was, he’d be the leading candidate in the Granite State, according to a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll published Sunday.
The poll shows Romney with 31 percent support, compared to Donald Trump‘s 15 percent.
However, with Romney not mentioned in the survey, the New York City real estate magnate continues to lead in New Hampshire with 22 percent support, double that of Marco Rubio, who ran second in the poll, with 11 percent. Ben Carson was next with 10 percent. John Kasich and Ted Cruz were tied for fourth, with 9 percent and former Gov. Jeb Bush had 8 percent. All others had either 4 percent support or less.
The poll shows that New Hampshire Republican Party voters’ priorities have changed in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. All year, jobs and the economy had been the top issue among these voters, but now 42 percent said terrorism and national security are the most important issues facing the country.
This does not appear likely to have much effect on preferences in the race for the GOP nomination, however, with one in four saying that Trump was the “best equipped” to handle the American response to the Islamic State. Another 13 percent believed that Rubio could lead the response better than others.
The poll of 500 New Hampshire Republicans and independent voters who said they intend to vote in the Republican primary was taken Tuesday through Thursday of last week and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
