Romney camp sees positives in N.H. poll numbers

Mitt Romney's path to the Republican presidential nomination has been clear and unwavering: Focus on winning in Iowa and New Hampshire, and use that momentum in states where he is less well-known.

That strategy looked as if it was working: Polls showed Romney dominating the GOP field in the two states, where he has campaigned the most and has vastly outspent his rivals.

But a CNN/WMUR poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released Wednesday showed that Romney had dropped 10 percentage points since mid-July, and that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Senator John McCain were nipping at his heels. Other surveys this month have also shown the race narrowing.

Romney's campaign yesterday dismissed the idea that the poll results were a sign of trouble, saying that they expected New Hampshire to be closely contested, and that Romney's campaign is in excellent shape, with strong support from conservatives and an experienced, growing ground organization.

"We've always known it's going to be a tough fight up here," said James Merrill, Romney's New Hampshire state director. "Senator McCain won the primary here before, and he's been campaigning here off and on for eight years. And everybody knows Mayor Giuliani."

But the campaign also appeared to try to lower expectations yesterday, making available an internal memo from strategist Alex Gage that said it would be unrealistic to expect Romney's national poll numbers to rise until after the early states vote.

"By no means do we expect to win both Iowa and New Hampshire - no Republican in the modern era ever has," he added, in boldface type.

Still, the former Massachusetts governor has made 80 campaign stops in New Hampshire this year, compared with 47 for both Giuliani and McCain, according to the Globe's tally. He also owns a summer home in Wolfeboro, N.H.

Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire Republican national committee member and one of Romney's senior strategists, stressed that Romney's numbers have been on an upward trend since the beginning of the year.

"If you had told me a year ago that we would be in the position we're in in the UNH poll, I would have taken it in a heartbeat," he said in a telephone interview.

Rath cited a host of numbers circulated by the campaign that he said showed that the poll had a lot of good news for Romney: His support is firmer than Giuliani's, and he leads among self-described conservatives - who make up the majority of primary voters - by 12 percentage points. Rath also said the campaign is predicting independents will make up roughly a quarter or less of the GOP primary vote - a smaller share than the 34 percent that the CNN/WMUR survey predicted - which could mean the poll understates Romney's overall numbers.

Andy Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, warned against reading too much into the numbers at this point in the campaign, as most voters have only just begun to pay attention.

"They are not investing time and energy into the campaign yet," he said. "It's still September."

Romney is the only GOP candidate who has advertised on television in the Granite State, spending about $1.7 million there so far. That will change this weekend, when McCain, who jumped from 12 percent to 17 percent in the new poll, airs his first round of television ads.

McCain, who won the 2000 New Hampshire primary and was the party's front-runner coming into the race, went through staff and financial wobbles earlier this year. His campaign now appears to be resurging, tied in large measure to his support for the so-called surge of US troops in Iraq.

McCain's first ads follow up on a speech yesterday morning to the conservative Hudson Institute in New York, where he suggested that Giuliani and Romney lack the foreign policy experience to be commander in chief.

After the speech, McCain was more direct.

"We don't have time or opportunity for on-the-job training, and the other candidates for president I don't believe have the qualifications that I do to hit the ground running and immediately address these serious challenges," he said, according to the Associated Press. "I am obviously of the belief that the country would be safer with me as its leader."

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com