Polls show Gingrich rising to the top of the GOP primary field

New polls released Monday show that Newt Gingrich is quickly becoming a formidable force at the top of the Republican field. The former House Speaker (R-Ga.) leads a new national poll from Democratic survey firm Public Policy Polling, while he has pulled into a statistical tie with Herman Cain in Iowa, according to a Republican pollster.

The PPP poll, to be fully released later Monday, will show substantial gains for Gingrich, who was tied in third with Rick Perry just a month ago, with half the support of Cain.

In Iowa, a poll conducted by Republican firm The Polling Company shows Gingrich with 19 percent of the vote, essentially tied with Cain's 20 percent. Mitt Romney rounds out the top 3 with 14 percent, while both Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul earn 10 percent of likely Iowa caucus-goers.

Gingrich has struggled to recover from a rocky start to his campaign, when staffers quit en masse and the former Speaker was dogged by questions about a multimillion-dollar credit line at Tiffany's and vacations to Hawaii. But since then, his refusal to attack other candidates — coupled with a critique of the media and the primary process, along with a rebooted Contract with America — have endeared him to Republican voters.

Gingrich has found an opening as Republicans have been hesitant to rally around presumptive front-runner Romney and as Cain has struggled to explain sexual harassment allegations that surfaced in past weeks.

Evidence of that rise has been apparent in the polls in recent weeks. In a McClatchy/Marist poll released over the weekend, Gingrich trailed Romney by 4 percentage points — and led Cain by 2 percent. A CBS poll, meanwhile, had Cain leading with 18 percent of voters, and Romney and Gingrich tied with 15 percent each.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Gingrich is tied for the greatest improvement over the past week, while Cain and Perry — who suffered an embarrassing gaffe at last week's Republican debate, when he couldn't remember the name of the third Cabinet-level agency he would eliminate — have taken the greatest hits.

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