62% say Mitt's still in race

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney may be struggling to win Tuesday's primary in Michigan after losing two other key states, but Utahns still have faith he can be his party's nominee.

According to a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll, 62 percent of Utahns believe Romney could win the Republican presidential nomination, and even more said he's still a serious candidate despite second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Just over half of the Utahns surveyed, 55 percent, want to see Romney — the leader of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and, like the majority of the state's residents, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — elected president in November.

But one-third of Utahns said they weren't sure who would end up being chosen to the nation's highest office. In fact, 19 percent said they believed a Democrat, Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, would be elected president. Only 17 percent said Romney would win.

The poll of 413 Utahns conducted by Dan Jones & Associates Jan. 8-10 has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. The results come as Romney readies for what could be a make-or-break election for his campaign, Michigan's GOP primary on Tuesday.

"It would be easy to say the big one now is Michigan. But he's already prepared to say, 'If I show well, I'm staying in it,' and he has the money to do it," pollster Dan Jones said. "I don't think it's do or die."

Jones, though, said Utahns may be overly optimistic about Romney's chances after his losses to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, in the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3 and to Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary.

A Detroit News poll being released today shows the race a statistical dead heat, with McCain at 27 percent and Romney at 26 percent. Huckabee is third with 19 percent.

In Utah, 69 percent of those polled labeled Romney a serious contender for the GOP nomination, compared to 19 percent who said he was less or not at all serious. Because that question was not asked until the New Hampshire results were in, only 296 Utahns responded.

"I think some of that is hope," Jones said. "I don't know that they really believe that will come about."

He predicted after the poll that Romney would finish a close second to McCain in Michigan, with Huckabee in third place. "I think it's a three-man race," Jones said. "It isn't the most fatalistic primary if you lose. But Romney's got to show that he's close."

The Romney campaign knows that's what he has to do.