Romney has 12-point lead in Florida: poll

Mitt Romney has opened up a 12-point lead over the rest of the Republican presidential field in the US battleground state of Florida, pollsters said Monday, a day before he was tipped to cruise to a win in New Hampshire.

The Quinnipiac University survey found that Romney has surged ahead in the southern state, seen as key in deciding the outcome of the November election.

Quinnipiac found that 36 percent of Republican likely voters said they were likely to vote for Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, when Florida holds its primary on January 31, compared with 24 percent for former House speaker Newt Gingrich.

Pennsylvania's former senator Rick Santorum was in third place with 16 percent and US Representative Ron Paul fourth at 10 percent.

Polling in the low single digits was Texas Governor Rick Perry with five percent support and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, with two percent.

Peter Brown, assistant director at Quinnipiac Polling Institute, observed that despite Romney's commanding lead he might still be "vulnerable" in Florida "with more than half of voters saying they might change their minds and more than 50 percent of them backing candidates perceived as more conservative."

Romney last week eked out a razor-thin victory in the key Iowa caucuses which kicked off the 2012 election season.

The millionaire businessman narrowly beat Catholic conservative Rick Santorum in the heartland state, and polls have shown him with a comfortable lead in New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.

The Quinnipiac survey of some 560 likely Republican voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.