Some new polls out this week really show the problems the GOP is facing with only a little over 3 weeks before voting kicks off.

First off let’s talk Iowa. This was being scene as a guarantee win for Newt Gingrich just a week ago, but that has now changed:

There has been some major movement in the Republican Presidential race in Iowa over the last week, with what was a 9 point lead for Newt Gingrich now all the way down to a single point. Gingrich is at 22% to 21% for Paul with Mitt Romney at 16%, Michele Bachmann at 11%, Rick Perry at 9%, Rick Santorum at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 5%, and Gary Johnson at 1%.

If you look at it in graph form, Ron Paul has really gained ground in the past week.

I always like looking at the graphs instead of the raw numbers because you can easily see trends. The one I see here is that Herman Cain’s support didn’t go to Romney or Gingrich, but rather to the more unlikely winners. Not only that, but these people have also peeled off support from the once front runners.

These numbers are the big eye catcher, but buried in the actual results (PDF) was something even more interesting

Q27 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of the Republican establishment?
Favorable……………………………………………….. 31%
Unfavorable ……………………………………………. 31%
Not sure …………………………………………………. 38%

This was a poll of likely Republican voters and the favorability of their identified party is split, with more not sure. That’s a major problem right there and when you get into the crosstabs, you can see where the problem comes from:

The people who identify as Tea Party have the strongest unfavorable views, which is not shocking. But the ones who don’t identify as Tea Party also have a strong unfavorable view. The ones who views the GOP establishment the best are the people who don’t know if they are Tea Party or not. To me that sounds like some messaging problems for the Tea Party.

I have more from this poll on the Tea Party, but I’m going to save that for it’s own post.