Poll: Paul, Huntsman losing ground in New Hampshire

Mitt Romney is maintaining his commanding lead in New Hampshire while his closest competition is beginning to drop away, according to a new poll.

The new poll released Wednesday is the result of a two-day survey of New Hampshire Republican voters by Suffolk University/7News. The daily results from the tracking poll have indicated strong support for Romney, who has not wavered from his 43 percent lead over the past three days.

His closest competition has been Ron Paul, who took 14 percent Wednesday, a slight drop from 16 percent in Tuesday’s results. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his campaign’s future on doing well in New Hampshire and ignored Tuesday’s first vote in Iowa in favor of having the state to himself, saw his support erode in the poll, dropping from third to fourth place behind Newt Gingrich. 

Gingrich held steady with 9 percent, Huntsman was at 7 percent — a drop from 10 percent in Tuesday’s poll — and Rick Santorum has support from 6 percent of GOP voters surveyed in the new poll.

According to David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, the number of undecided voters rose in the latest results. 

Romney won the Iowa caucuses, where the first vote of the 2012 cycle took place Tuesday, by only eight votes over Santorum, who took second place after a surprise jump in the polls the week before. Paul earned third place and Gingrich fourth in the Iowa results, followed by Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday. Huntsman won 1 percent of the Iowa votes after choosing to focus his campaign on New Hampshire.

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