Story highlights A new poll shows Republicans want Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul to drop out 
 
 The poll indicates Gingrich supporters back Mitt Romney as their second choice 
 
 Romney has a 2-to-1 lead in delegates over Rick Santorum 
 
 Gingrich, Paul and Santorum say they will stay in the race 
 
 With calls increasing for some or all of them to drop out, challengers to Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney say they intend to keep battling until the nomination gets settled. 
 
 A CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday indicated that most Republicans would like to see former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul end their bids, but they also want conservative challenger Rick Santorum to stay in the race. 
 
 The poll, conducted over the weekend, showed that about six in 10 Republicans want Gingrich and Paul to halt their campaigns, while a similar number supported Santorum continuing his bid. 
 
 According to CNN's latest estimate, Romney has secured 569 delegates and needs 575 more to reach the 1,144 required to clinch the GOP nomination. 
 
 Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, has 262 delegates, with Gingrich at 136 and Paul at 71. 
 
 Despite the long odds, none of the three trailing candidates appears close to giving up. 
 
 Santorum challenged the delegate math, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday that the Republican race was likely to continue until the party's national convention in August in Florida. 
 
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 "There may be someone with what they say are enough delegates, but as you also know, Wolf, a huge number of delegates are uncommitted," Santorum said. "They may be for me, or they may be for Mitt, but they're technically uncommitted, and therefore you can't put them in your column." 
 
 Gingrich said Tuesday that he would drop out if Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, reaches the 1,144-delegate threshold to claim the nomination. However, Gingrich added he doubted that would happen before the convention. 
 
 "Gov. Romney is the front-runner but is a long way from a majority," Gingrich said at Maryland's capitol building in Annapolis. "If (Romney) does get, by the time Utah votes on the 26th of June, if he gets a majority, obviously I will support him and will be delighted to do anything I can to help defeat Barack Obama." 
 
 Otherwise, Gingrich said, a failure by Romney to secure the nomination in the primaries would bring "one of the most interesting open conventions in American history." 
 
 "It'll be a 60-day dialogue on television, radio, the Internet all the way up to Tampa," Gingrich said. "And the question will be asked: Who can best beat Barack Obama? And at that point, I think, most Republicans agree that I would probably do a better job debating Obama than any other candidate. And I think it becomes a very viable, very lively campaign." 
 
 Paul also sounded committed to staying in the race, telling CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" on Monday that "it's way too soon for you to write anybody off." 
 
 "Why should we just throw in the towel because people like you say, 'Hey, throw in the towel'? " Paul asked. 
 
 According to the new poll, 36% of Republicans support Romney for the nomination, and 26% back Santorum. It was a different story in February, when the two men were effectively tied in CNN's last national survey, with Santorum at 34% and Romney at 32%. 
 
 The survey seemed to dispel the commonly held notion that Gingrich and Santorum were vying for conservative support against the more moderate Romney. According to the poll, most of Gingrich's supporters said Romney was their second choice, rather than Santorum. 
 
 "If you recalculate the GOP horse race using the Gingrich voters' second choice, Romney's lead over Santorum grows to 15 percentage points -- 45% for Romney and 30% for Santorum -- compared to the 10-point margin Romney currently has in the four-man field," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. 
 
 The primary calendar resumes April 3 with contests in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia. A three-week break follows until April 24, when New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island vote. 
 
 Those contests in more moderate states in the Northeast, Mid Atlantic and Midwest appear to favor Romney over Santorum, with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, which Santorum represented in Congress for nearly two decades. 
 
 On Tuesday, a week before the Wisconsin primary, a new poll by the Marquette Law School showed Romney leading Santorum, with Paul and Gingrich well back in the contest for 42 delegates. 

 Amid a series of self-inflicted campaign blunders, Republican presidential upstart Rick Santorum’s huge lead in Pennsylvania has evaporated, according to a new Franklin & Marshall University poll. 
 
 Santorum enjoyed a 29-point lead over Mitt Romney in February’s F&M poll. The lead has dwindled to a two-point advantage in March. 
 
 The staggering reversal comes with Romney yet to spend any time or money in the commonwealth. It sets the stage for a highly contested April 24 state Republican primary. 
 
 The poll, conducted from March 20 through Sunday, found that native son Santorum’s support among likely Republican voters fell from 45 percent to 30 percent since February. In the same time, Romney’s appeal grew from 16 percent to 28 percent. 
 
 Franklin & Marshall pollster G. Terry Madonna said the dramatic shift is largely down to Santorum himself. 
 
 “He was leading a month ago when he was on message, talking about the economy and foreign policy,” Madonna said. “But his forays into cultural and social issues have certainly cost him support. It’s been provocatively off message.” 
 
 The F&M poll surveyed 505 registered Republicans. The survey has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points. 
 
 U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stayed in single digits in the new poll. Gingrich, who was born in Harrisburg and raised in Hummelstown, finished fourth. 
 
 The poll also found that a significant number of Pennsylvania Republicans backing Romney are tiring of the combative GOP nomination race. 
 
 Some 18 percent of the former Massachusetts’ governor’s supporters might vote against the Republican nominee in November if the nominee is not Romney, according to the poll. 
 
 “The longer this goes on, the more and more Republicans are saying this has to end,” Madonna said. “In 2008, this ideological divide didn’t exist between [Democratic nomination rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama] and it wasn’t as bitter and divisive. This [2012 race] has gotten personal.” 
 
 Santorum confidants struggled to explain the drop. 
 
 “It’s hard to imagine without any real campaigning going on in the state that you could have that dramatic a switch,” said state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre County, a Santorum ally. “It will be close when all the [GOP] establishment and money pours in for Romney. That’ll make it a bigger hurdle, but we’re confident he’ll be able to carry his home state.” 
 
 In recent weeks, Santorum’s campaign has faltered from a pox of damaging statements. 
 
 Campaigning in Puerto Rico two weeks ago, he told voters in the Spanish-speaking U.S. territory that officially adopting English should be a pre-condition of statehood. 
 
 Santorum followed that misstep last week in Illinois by appearing insensitive to the nation’s jobless. 
 
 “I don’t care what the unemployment rate is going to be,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It’s something more foundational that’s going on.” 
 
 And 48 hours later, Santorum drew widespread condemnation from within his own party after telling Texas Republicans, “We might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with” Romney. 
 
 He lost Puerto Rico and Illinois. Texas votes May 29. 
 
 Santorum’s comments and subsequent losses feed into the common critique that his combative, hard-right ideology makes him a general-election pariah. And a verbal altercation with a New York Times reporter on Sunday didn’t help dispel the growing caricature. 
 
 The Romney campaign has used the incident to add to the portrait of an irritable candidate panicking in the final stages of the campaign. 
 
 “Rick Santorum is becoming more desperate and angry and unhinged every day,” Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said. 
 
 Romney himself was a bit less disparaging. 
 
 “I’m not going to worry about what Rick is saying these days,” Romney told CNN. “I know that when you fall further and further behind, you get a little more animated.” 
 
 Santorum was less animated Saturday when he contritely addressed the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of commonwealth conservative activists. 
 
 Having represented Pennsylvania in Congress for 24 years before he was soundly defeated in 2006, Santorum indirectly acknowledged that he brought about his ouster by supporting Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in 2004. 
 
 “It was a real eye-opening, awakening experience for me, and I took that as a good bit of self-correction,” he said . 
 
 The measured, hat-in-hand appeal bore episodic fruit. 
 
 Santorum won the PLC straw poll, drawing 45 percent to Romney’s 28 percent. Paul, who grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Gettysburg College, won 16 percent. 
 
 Despite addressing the PLC in person, Gingrich finished last with 10 percent. 
 
 Even with the straw poll results, the tempered applause directed toward Santorum at the conference suggests that the politically compatible PLC crowd had not forgiven his 2004 transgression. 
 
 Wednesday’s Franklin & Marshall poll confirms that Santorum faces an uphill climb to win back some conservatives. Complicating matters is the likelihood that even if he takes the Pennsylvania primary in a landslide, he’ll leave with a pittance of delegates. 
 
 Pennsylvania’s GOP primary voters select delegates by their own name in each congressional district. But the delegate candidates are not directly identified with any presidential candidate on the ballot. In that setup, voters are more likely to select a delegate they know, or the first person listed. 
 
 Gingrich and Romney have prominently placed delegates all over the state. 
 
 “Pennsylvania is not as important to Romney as it is obviously to Santorum,” said Alan Novak, a Romney supporter and former Pennsylvania GOP chairman. But because of his superior delegate ballot placement, “Romney can end up with as many or more delegates out of Pennsylvania.” 
 
 The new Franklin & Marshall poll will be seen as an open invitation for the Romney forces to press their monetary and organizational advantage, beat Santorum in his own state, and eliminate him from the race once and for all. 
 
 
 

– Most Republicans believe there are two too many candidates still seeking their party's nomination, according to the latest CNN poll. The poll found that roughly 60% of the GOP want Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul to call it a day, while a similar proportion want Rick Santorum to stick around. But neither Gingrich nor Paul appear likely to drop out: Gingrich has big plans for the Republican National Convention and when Piers Morgan asked Ron Paul about dropping out, the Texan told him not to "pester me with silly questions." But even though most Republicans want Santorum to stay in the race, it looks like he has a tough few weeks ahead of him. The CNN poll gave Romney a 10-point lead over Santorum, 36% to 26%, and most of the states voting in April appear likely to hand more victories to Romney. The one exception was Pennsylvania, which votes April 24, but the latest poll there found that Santorum's lead has shrunk from 29 points in February to just two points. The pollsters blame Santorum's "forays into cultural and social issues" for the drop, the Patriot-News notes.