InsiderAdvantage's latest poll numbers, completed Sunday night, find the following shape-up for the Iowa caucuses Tuesday:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — 23 percent
Texas Rep. Ron Paul — 22 percent
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — 18 percent
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — 16 percent
Texas Gov. Rick Perry — 10 percent
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — 6 percent
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman — 2 percent
Other — 1 percent
Undecided — 2 percent
The poll was completed Sunday night after the Des Moines Register poll of 729 Iowa Republicans likely to vote Tuesday and has a statistical error margin of 3.5 percent.
"It's basically a two-tiered race," Matt Towery, chief pollster for InsiderAdvantage, tells Newsmax. "The first tier is Romney, Paul, Santorum, and Gingrich."
The remaining candidates no longer are players in the GOP race for president, Towery said.
The surprise of the poll, Towery said, is how well Gingrich is doing despite "seeing blood everywhere" after the massive pummeling he's taken in local and national TV ads, largely funded by pro-Romney supporters, attacking the former speaker's record.
InsiderAdvantage finds Gingrich at 16 percent — up from the De Moines Register poll's finding of 13 percent. Towery notes that, if Gingrich finishes in fourth place, he'd hold the same position Sen. John McCain had in the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
Towery predicts that Ron Paul will fade quickly after Iowa, leaving the anti-Romney race between Santorum and Gingrich.
The InsiderAdvantage closing survey for Iowa has been the most accurate poll in predicting the winner. The poll foresaw John Kerry's upset over Howard Dean in 2004, Obama's win over Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Mike Huckabee's surprise victory that same year.
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