Mitt Romney More Electable Than Rick Perry, HuffPost-Patch GOP Power Outsiders Say

Can Mitt Romney be elected president?

Influential Republicans in Iowa and the two other early-voting states -- New Hampshire and South Carolina, say yes.

In fact, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have impressed the engaged Republican activists who took part in our HuffPost-Patch Power Outsiders poll, Romney impresses them even more.

We first asked respondents to use one word to describe their impression of Romney. The majority of answers (59 percent) were positive. The most frequently used positive words were "presidential," "experienced," "polished," "competent" and "smooth."

More than a quarter of the words used to describe Romney (28 percent) were unambiguously negative. The most frequently used negative words were "RINO" (an acronym for the phrase "Republican in name only"), "flip-flopper," "plastic" and "slick."

The breakdown of positive and negative judgments of Romney looks roughly comparable to what we found last week when our survey focused on Texas Governor Rick Perry. The percentage of positive words used to describe Perry was similar (58 percent), but the share of negative words was slightly smaller for Perry (24 percent) than for Romney (28 percent).

More specific probes reveal an even more favorable reaction to Romney. More than four out of five respondents describe Romney as someone who "takes stands on issues you agree with" (80 percent). Even more say he "would make a good president" (86 percent)" and "can beat Barack Obama in the general election" (89 percent).

We can add greater context by comparing these results to the reactions to Rick Perry we gathered last week. Romney gets a higher positive rating than Perry on all three questions, but especially on electability (89 percent for Romney versus 76 percent for Perry).

Power Outsiders is a Patch-Huffington Post project that surveys influential Republicans in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Details on responses about Romney and a full list of participants can be found here.