A new survey by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling has this surprising result — Rick Santorum performs better in North Carolina in a head-to-head match against President Obama than does Mitt Romney:

PPP’s first general election poll anywhere since Rick Santorum’s surge in Iowa finds that he’s the most electable of the Republican candidates in the important swing state of North Carolina. Santorum fights Obama to a 46-46 tie in the state, while Mitt Romney trails Obama 46-45. It’s not a significant difference, but Romney has tended to best the rest of the GOP field by a wide margin on the electability front in our polling.

The reason Santorum does ever so slightly better is that he takes 20% of the Democratic vote to Romney’s 17%. That’s an interesting finding and what it suggests to me is that socially conservative Democrats might be more inclined to vote for Santorum than Romney because he provides a clearer contrast with Obama on social issues.

SNIP

The likelihood of anyone other than Romney being the Republican nominee seems increasingly small, but for what it’s worth Obama leads the rest of the field by healthy margins: 47-41 over Ron Paul, 49-43 over Newt Gingrich, and 49-41 over Rick Perry.