2 December 2011 Last updated at 06:30 ET

Bases of support: Who's backing which candidate?

The Republican candidates are all vying for the votes of members of the Republican party in the upcoming state primaries and caucuses.

The Republican base is comprised of many disparate factions, like evangelical Christian social conservatives, centrists, and members of the Tea Party movement. To what extent are the major factions likely to support each candidate?

The BBC has asked five political pundits to assess the strength of each candidate among four major factions, from zero to five stars.

The pundits:

• Larry Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics
• Rhodes Cook is a political analyst and author of the Rhodes Cook Letter
• Carl Cannon is Washington editor of RealClearPolitics
• David Yepsen is the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University
• Dante Scala is an associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire

The candidates:

Mitt Romney

	Evangelicals	Moderates	Tea Party	Wall Street
Sabato
Cook
Cannon
Scala
Yepsen
Average

Newt Gingrich

	Evangelicals	Moderates	Tea Party	Wall Street
Sabato
Cook
Cannon
Scala
Yepsen
Average

Ron Paul

	Evangelicals	Moderates	Tea Party	Wall Street
Sabato	-			-
Cook
Cannon
Scala
Yepsen
Average

Rick Santorum

	Evangelicals	Moderates	Tea Party	Wall Street
Sabato		-
Cook
Cannon
Scala
Yepsen
Average