That Newt has been the only candidate out of the "not-romney" options that, during his month long run as the "hot" candidate has gained on Obama by both his own support number pretty consistently rising and Obama's consistently lowering save for one short spike, suggesting that rather than simply JUST picking up undecideds he's actually causing people to change from Obama to either him or undecided. During Bachmann, Cain, and Perry's "hot" run in the Primary that was not the case.
Over the past month, as Newt has started to gain significant momentum and attention, he's made steady progress towards polling against Obama and in large part at Obama's expense. At the beginning of November Newt was -13 against Obama. At the start of December, he now sits at -5.7. He's gained 7.3 points on Obama over this month long period of attention. He made up this ground seemingly by not just picking up undecideds, but also chipping away at Obama's support as well. Obama started at 50.3% support over Newt. He's currently sitting at 48.7%. About a 1.6% swap over of support that left Obama and potentially went to Newt or into the undecided territory.
Newt's "baggage" is not unknown. Its unlikely that many of the people in these polls don't know about the well publicized baggage that isn't some new scandalous news story but has LONG been tied to Newt. Yet despite that, he's significantly surged and in a month cut Obama's lead over him in more than half.
Polling simply doesn't suggest that he's got no shot. He's showing continual, significant growth currently and has shown the possibility that he may have the ability to at least help dampen the support for Obama. Its far to early to say for sure that he'd pose a challenge to Obama, but there's at least factual evidence showing that its a possibility rather than the anecdotal "Oh, he'll never get people to support him" assertions that are used to justify completely writing him off.
