The latest Gallup poll has some interesting conclusions from the pollsters:

Mitt Romney stands out as the candidate who is significantly less well known than the others. Over half of Republicans say they don't know enough about Romney to be able to rate him. His image among those Republicans who do know him is quite positive. This suggests the possibility that if Romney maintains his net positive image among Republicans as the campaign progresses, he could be in a position to become more of a factor in the presidential nomination picture.

Both Romney's overall likability numbers and likebilty numbers among Democrats have risen.



Yet his name recognition is still low, thus showing that Romney's chance to define himself (as noted by Gallup) is still strong.



But the real story is shown among republican respondents to the poll, as reported at The Politico:

	Favorable	Unfavorable	Net Change Since 2/11
Giuliani	78%	10%	-2
McCain	67%	19%	-1
Gov. Romney	37%	11%	+12
Gingrich	52%	30%	N/A

Wow! Romney's likability among republicans has climbed nearly 12% Both Giuliani and McCain have dropped. It is starting to look like Romney's showing at CPAC and his TV adds are paying off. I did a rather informal check on www.pollingreport.com and found that Romney has climbed an average among all the polls by 1 percent each month since December- 5%, 6% and 7% in February. So far the first few polls in March have Romney averaging 9%. These aren't huge gains like Rudy's, but with Romney's favourability climbing and Rudy's slipping, we are starting to see the kind of growth that Romney needs.

(First two graphics are courtesy of Gallup and the last one is pulled from www.politico.com