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With just over one week to go before the big Michigan primary, new polls show Mitt Romney has closed the gap on Rick Santorum, but still has his work cut out for him in the Great Lakes State. Public Policy Polling's latest numbers say that in the last week Romney has turned a 15-point deficit into just four, which is now within the margin of error. But the polling also shows that the Romney is not making up ground at the expense of Santorum, whose favorably ratings and share of the vote have remained largely unchanged. Mitt has simply been winning over more and more of Michigan's undecideds. The poll also suggests that if Newt Gingrich were to drop out of the race, Santorum's advantage would grow once again.
One theory behind the surge is that Romney's overwhelming ad blitz may finally be sinking in. He's been blanketing the state with TV commercials for the last couple of weeks and doing his best to defend his anti-auto bailout pledge as a principled stand for conservatism — which is helped by the fact that less than 30% of those taking part in the latest poll are union members. Romney has big leads among women and moderates (suggesting the birth control dustup is not a winner for Santorum) and, oddly enough, among Catholics, despite the fact that his main opponent is one of them. (So is Newt Gingrich, however, so perhaps that's a divided vote problem.)