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Poll: Conservatives, Liberals Agree: Romney GOP's Most 'Acceptable'

Mitt Romney can make the claim he's something of a "uniter not a divider," to use the words of a former GOP president, based on a new Gallup poll that found that voters across the political spectrum found him to be the most "acceptable" of all the Republican presidential candidates.

In an intriguing result, pollsters found the same percentage of conservatives and moderates and liberals — 59 percent — rated Romney as the most acceptable Republican White House hopeful.

That suggests that conservatives may be equating acceptability with electability since Romney is widely perceived as the most electable on the list even though many conservatives suspect he's not really one of them.

Ironically, that same sense that Romney may not be as conservative as he now professes to be may help explain why moderates and liberals view Romney as the most acceptable candidate as well.

Newt Gingrich was the second most acceptable candidate by both conservatives and moderates/liberals. But his percentages showed some of the differences you would expect between conservatives and moderates/liberals. Fifty one percent of conservatives said he was the most acceptable candidate compared with 36 percen of moderates/liberals.

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Frank James joined NPR News in April 2009 to launch the blog, "The Two-Way," with co-blogger Mark Memmott.
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