A new University of New Hampshire poll shows Mitt Romney in the lead in the Granite State with 35%. Michele Bachmann is second with 12% -- followed by Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani 7%, Rick Perry 4%, Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin 3%, Herman Cain and Jon Huntsman 2%, and Gingrich, Johnson, and Santorum 1%. Romney is the only candidate to beat President Obama in a head-to-head, 47%-43%, though the gap has narrowed since April, when Romney led 50%-43%. (Obama continues to beat Pawlenty and Bachmann, though Bachmann is more competitive than Pawlenty.)

Romney has the highest favorability rating of the candidates at 68%-24%. Gingrich, by the way, has seen his favorability ratings tank: He went from 42%-44% in April, to 25%-62% now. Huntsman, Palin, and Ron Paul are also net-negatives. (Huntsman is 19%-23% with 46% saying they don’t know.)

GINGRICH: Newt Gingrich raised approximately $2 million in the second fundraising quarter and will end the month with $225,000 in the bank, although his campaign remains about a million dollars in debt, Politico reports.

According to The Atlantic, Gingrich took to Google’s new social network Google+ yesterday, writing that his team is trying to figure out how to use Hangouts, a group video chat program, to discuss policy topics like creating personal Social Security accounts and repealing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

Gingrich wrote a policy paper yesterday urging fellow Republicans to stand firm in their fight with President Obama over the debt ceiling, the Washington Post writes.

PAWLENTY: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter and top political adviser to former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, has joined the Tim Pawlenty campaign. The New York Times: “The campaign is clearly hoping that the staff-level hire will suggest that Mr. Pawlenty will have the support of Mr. Huckabee, who swept to a victory in Iowa with support from the many evangelical Christians in the Republican primary.”

Pawlenty dismissed the formation of a group, led by former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale, trying to break a budget stalemate in Minnesota, the Des Moines Register writes. “Minnesota government is shutdown because of Democrats’ insistence on Obama-esque solutions to increase spending and raise taxes,” the Pawlenty camp said in a statement.

PERRY: The New York Times writes about tale of two Texans – Rick Perry and George W. Bush -- and the rivalry that exists between them. “The tensions first spilled out publicly in 2007, when a video wound up on YouTube capturing Mr. Perry speaking dismissively of Mr. Bush at a Republican house party in Iowa for former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York. In the video, Mr. Perry said, ‘George Bush was never a fiscal conservative — never was,’ adding, I mean, ’95, ’97, ’99, George Bush was spending money.’”

GOP 12’s Heinze looks at the possibility of Sarah Palin endorsing Perry, and the similarities and friendship between the two.

ROMNEY: The Romney campaign announced that it raised $18.25 million for the second fundraising quarter.

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz will endorse Mitt Romney for president today, the Huffington Post writes. Chaffetz, a former staffer for former Utah governor and presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, said he thought Romney had the best shot at defeating President Obama, and also borrowed a line from Romney’s health care playbook, saying Romney did the right thing by enacting reform at the state level only.

“Campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Mitt Romney stood by his charge from earlier this week that President Obama's policies have deepened the recession and that the recovery has been anemic,” the Los Angeles Times writes. “Asked after an event Tuesday whether those statements were contradictory and whether he believed the nation was still engulfed in a recession, Romney noted that the term recession is often used to describe the broader economic downturn, rather than just the narrow definition ‘that economists use, which is a shrinking GDP.’”

“With organized labor at the center of several nasty state budget fights, Mitt Romney spoke warmly of unions at a town hall Tuesday,” Politico writes. “‘Unions have played a very important role historically in balancing in some cases the egregious actions of some employers and have been important to the development of our economy,’ Romney said at a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on Tuesday morning.” He went on, however, to criticize the National Labor Relations Board’s ruling against Boeing’s relocation of a plant to South Carolina, a right-to-work state, faulting “union CEOs that are running the unions.”