Santorum’s and Romney’s scores are fairly weak for the leading candidates in positive intensity, based on the context provided by Gallup polling on this measure, which began last February. Typically, the highest Positive Intensity Scores for the Republican candidates in a given period have been +20 or greater. And Barack Obama’s Positive Intensity Score among Democrats and Democratic leaners is +32 in the Jan. 12-15 polling.

In the prior GOP update, conducted Dec. 12-18, Gingrich led with +14, but he is now down to +1, the greatest decline among the candidates. The intensity scores for Perry, Paul, and Huntsman have also declined in the past month, while those for Romney and Santorum have held steady…

Romney has emerged as the front-runner partly because he has always been among the most liked Republican candidates — based on his total favorable ratings — even if he does not generate a lot of strong positive emotion from the party rank-and-file. In the current poll, he and Santorum tie for the lead in total favorable ratings at 68%.