Given a choice between ideology and victory, Republican voters overwhelming choose victory in the 2012 presidential race.  More than two-thirds (68%) will choose someone who can beat Barack Obama over a candidate with whom they agree but might not be able to beat Obama, while only 29% will choose solely on the issues:

Given the choice between a candidate who agrees with them on the issues or a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama in 2012, a new national poll indicates Republicans overwhelming want a winner.

According to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, nearly seven out of ten Republicans say they would prefer a GOP presidential nominee who can top Obama in the next election, with 29 percent saying a nominee who agrees with them on every issue that matters the most is more important.

The leading candidates for that honor are still the three we’ve seen for several months.  Mike Huckabee tops the list at 21%, exactly where he was in CNN’s previous poll.  Sarah Palin takes second place at 19%, up from 14% in October and her highest level in the series reaching back to March.  Romney drops from 20% to 18% to finish right behind Palin, but all three are well within the margin of error of each other.  Only Newt Gingrich scores in double digits after the top three.

In a result that undermines the “electability” finding just a wee bit, Ron Paul comes in fifth with 7% of the vote.  I wonder who the other 22% chose?

Obama doesn’t do terribly well in this poll, either.  At this point, a majority of 51% will either probably or definitely not vote for Obama’s reelection, compared to 48% who probably or definitely will.  That question was asked of the general polling sample, which apparently consists of general-population adults, not just registered or likely voters.  That’s a poor but not insurmountable re-elect number.  Bill Clinton had worse at this point in his first term (39/54) and prevailed, but then again, the GOP didn’t exactly pick the most electable of nominees in Robert Dole, either — and Ross Perot took 8% of the popular vote as well as an independent in that election.  Clinton only got to 48%.

The poll sample is very murky, too.  The introduction claims that the survey polled “479 Republicans and Independents who lean Republican, and 441 Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic.”  With a total of 1012 responses, that works out to a D/R/I split of 44/47/9, which oversamples both parties and undersamples independents.  It also leaves open the question of how many of the 479 Republicans and leaners are actually registered Republicans, and the same is also true of the Democrats in the sample.  It could comprise 100 Republicans, 300 Democrats, and 612 independents.  Unfortunately, CNN didn’t see fit to include the results of the demographic questions in the survey.

The top-line results do tend to downplay the notion that 2012 will be an ideologically-driven cycle, with the Tea Party splitting the GOP — a prediction that failed to come to pass in 2010 as well.  Republican voters very much have their eyes on the prize.