Ron Paul has been a thorn in the side of Mitt Romney's presidential run for years, but a new poll suggests that should the Texas congressman launch an independent candidacy it would actually help Mitt Romney.
The Rasmussen survey of a hypothetical three-way race for the White House shows Romney with 44%, President Obama with 39% and Ron Paul with 13%.
Ron Paul has not pulled out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination, although his chances of capturing the nomination are becoming increasingly remote.
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 6-7, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.