Rick Perry remains atop the Republican field of presidential contenders, a CNN poll found Monday, but his next-closest rival Mitt Romney fares better against President Barack Obama.
Despite widely-panned performances in the two most recent presidential debates, Texas Governor Perry scored 28 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in the survey, while 21 percent backed Romney as the conservative nominee to take on Democrat Obama in 2012 election.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich was in third at 10 percent, while Texas Representative Ron Paul, now on his third White House bid, got seven percent, a score shared with former Godfather\'s Pizza chief executive Herman Cain and former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who is not officially running.
Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a favorite of Tea Party conservatives, stood at four percent, former senator Rick Santorum got three percent and former Utah governor and US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman at one percent.
When Palin was not among choices given to those polled, the survey obtained similar results, with 30 percent going to Perry, 22 percent for Romney, 11 percent for Gingrich and the other candidates scoring only in the single digits.
But in a head-to-head matchup against Obama, Romney performed best. In a near tie, Obama got 49 percent in a hypothetical run against Romney, at 48 percent.
The poll also gave Obama a five-point lead over Perry of 51 to 46 percent. And against Paul, the president lead by four points, 51 to 47 percent. He had wide margins of victory against Bachmann and Palin in the survey taken over a year from the elections.
Conducted Friday through Sunday, the telephone poll surveyed 1,010 adult Americans, including 447 Republicans and independents who lean toward Republicans. It had an overall sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Perry finished a distant second in a closely-watched straw poll test vote of Republican activists in the key state of Florida over the weekend, following poor debate showings.
"Did Perry\'s performance in the most recent debate affect the horse race? Maybe yes, but maybe no," cautioned CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
"Perry\'s support is down just two points, and Romney is up only one to three points -- and since all those numbers are well within the sampling error, it doesn\'t look like much has changed, possibly because average voters aren\'t as plugged into the debates as political junkies are."
On Saturday, the top Republican presidential candidate suffered a blow when a former pizza executive won a straw poll that could foretell who will take on Obama.
The key Florida straw poll, which is non-binding, saw longshot candidate and former Godfather\'s Pizza chief executive Herman Cain beat seven other hopefuls including Perry.
Cain scored an upset victory with 37.1 percent of the vote (2,657 votes) at the Presidency 5 straw poll in Orlando, while Perry came in second with 15.4 percent.
Romney, who has been in a tight race with Perry, came in third place with 14 percent.
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