Romney's Pollster Credits Advertising For A Jump In South Carolina

(The State's Aaron Gould Sheinin first had the news of a Romney internal poll showing him gaining some ground in South Carolina. The Romney internals have him at 20 percent, second only to Fred Thompson.)

This column has gotten its grubby hands on the full memo.

As interesting as the raw numbers is the corresponding analysis from Romney's chief pollster, Jan van Lohuizen.

He writes:

Our gains have not been from undecided voters, but have been take-aways; we’ve draw[n] away support from Thompson and Giuliani. Thompson in particular has lost ground since
August. While he is still in first place, he has lost significantly on the ballot question (-8
from 32 to 24%). Similarly Giuliani dropped 6 points since late August. McCain’s
numbers are not moving; the small comeback McCain staged in the national polling and
in some states did not materialize in South Carolina.

Why is Romney improving? This chart tells the story, according to van Lohuizen:

In other words, Romney's support rises among those respondents who recalled seeing a Romney television advertisement.

van Lohuizen interviewed 400 Republicans using his own likely voter screen, which is a fairly healthy size sample.

Two other points from the internal memo:

Consistent with this we gained in all parts of the state and with all voter groups. In fact we are currently in first place in the Columbia market and in second place in the
Greenville / Spartanburg market.

Finally, we continue to have ground to gain. The best indicator of this is name id.
Favorable impressions currently are at 68% well short of the 80 percent range numbers
we have seen in Iowa and New Hampshire.