United Liberty

With the Ames Straw Poll on Saturday and candidates trying to gain ground, it looks Rick Perry will finally announce his president bid on Saturday in South Carolina; and he’ll enter the race as new polling from CNN shows him in striking distance of Mitt Romney.

The poll also shows Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, neither of whom have announced, and Ron Paul are not far behind Perry and Romney. But what about Michele Bachmann? She may be driving some of the narrative in the race, but her numbers have dropped from 12% last month to 7% in August.

Here are the full results:

• Mitt Romney: 17%
• Rick Perry: 15%
• Rudy Giuliani: 12%
• Sarah Palin: 12%
• Ron Paul: 12%
• Michele Bachmann: 7%
• Newt Gingrich: 5%
• Herman Cain: 4%
• Jon Huntsman: 4%
• Tim Pawlenty: 2%
• Rick Santorum: 2%
• Other: 2%
• None/No one/No opinion: 6%

CNN also weighed the field under the assumption that Giuliani and Palin don’t get in the race, and as you can see, Romney adds some separation between he and Perry. But Paul isn’t all that far behind.

• Mitt Romney: 23%
• Rick Perry: 18%
• Ron Paul: 14%
• Michele Bachmann: 9%
• Newt Gingrich: 8%
• Herman Cain: 5%
• Jon Huntsman: 5%
• Tim Pawlenty: 3%
• Rick Santorum: 3%
• Other: 2%
• None/No one/No opinion: 9%

But the poll shows that Giuliani does the best against Barack Obama. Romney is in a statistical dead heat with the president, but Palin and Perry would lag far behind Obama, though I believe the latter has a name recognition problem while the former is just polarizing and unpopular.