The FINANCIAL — Mitt Romney has a growing lead in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and almost half of the party's voters expect him to be the nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Twenty-eight per cent of Republicans backed the former Massachusetts governor, giving him a lead of 8 percentage points over his nearest challenger Herman Cain in the poll, taken on November 10 and 11.
Romney was 5 percentage points ahead in a survey taken on November 7 and 8.
Newt Gingrich, the US House of Representatives speaker in the mid-1990s, solidified a recent rise among conservatives seeking an alternative to the more moderate Romney, coming in third place in the current poll with 16 per cent.Gingrich, who is seen as having performed well in recent debates, was viewed as the second-most "presidential" of the Republican hopefuls in the poll.
Whether or not they support him, almost half of the Republicans surveyed expect Romney to become the nominee to oppose President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the November 2012 election.
Romney, who also ran for president in 2008, has been in first or second place in polls for months and enjoys by far the most campaign funds of the Republican field.
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