Regardless of any Waterloo-like stands in Florida, Rudy Giuliani is done. Why? Because his “momentum-proof” tri-state area firewall is gone, as best signified by the fact that Giuliani is now significantly behind John McCain in New York, according to the Sienna poll. Trend in parentheses (PDF link).

McCain: 36% (15%)

Giuliani: 24% (48%)

Romney: 10% (7%)

It gets worse: Last month, Giuliani was up 33% on McCain in the Sienna poll. That’s right, there was a 45% swing in New York state against Rudy Giuliani in one month. New York Republicans don’t even like Giuliani any more:

For the first time in a Siena poll, Giuliani had a higher unfavorable rate _ 48 percent _ than favorable just six years after the Sept. 11 attacks. McCain was viewed favorably by 56 percent of New Yorkers.

Another NY poll out today from Marist gives McCain an even bigger lead: 34% to 19%.

Giuliani campaign manager Mike DuHaime had previously called Giuliani’s leads in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut “momentum proof.”

“Some of those leads are momentum-proof at this point,” he said. He stressed Giuliani’s margins in the New York tri-state area of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut versus what he called Romney’s “precarious” lead in New Hampshire where he is known, having been governor of neighboring Massachusetts.

Giuliani now trails in New York (by 12-15%), New Jersey (by 2-4%), Connecticut (by 23%), and Pennsylvania (by 16%), another February 5th neighbor to New York.

If Giuliani is going to lose badly in New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and likely lose in New Jersey as well, he has no base of support. His only hope is in Florida.

So, how does Florida look for Rudy? Not good - he trails in every poll that’s come out in the last ten days save one, which shows a statistical tie. The Insider Advantage poll from last Thursday showed Giuliani with a one point lead over McCain and Romney. The Rasmussen poll out today has him down five to Romney.

As I said above, Rudy Giuliani is done.

Polling, Rudy Giuliani | 10 Comments »

NRO’s Campaign Spot was listening to Sean Hannity’s radio show, a practice that would lead many of us to drive spikes into our own ears, and heard this:

On the Sean Hannity radio program, pollster John Zogby said that Texas Congressman Ron Paul could end up surprising the field - and “embarass a lot of the frontrunners” by wildly exceeding expectations taking 15 to 18 percent in the New Hampshire primary.

An incredulous Hannity asked, “You don’t see any chance he wins this thing, do you?” Zogby said no.

So you have Huckabee as the insurgent second-place threat in Iowa. You have Ron Paul poised to surprise in New Hampshire. Rudy Giuliani will be laying low until February 5. While the expectations game can take unpredictable turns, the one constant in all this seems likely to be Mitt Romney, who has been slow and steady right from the beginning. You think he minds sharing the spotlight with the novelty acts, if by mid-January he’s the only one of the frontrunners to be running at the actual front?

Polling, Ron Paul, Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | 2 Comments »

The new Washington Post poll echoes the recent Newsweek survey in that it shows Rudy Giuliani maintaining his position at the front of the Republican pack. But the Post sounds unconvinced, calling the GOP race the “most open in decades”:

Former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani maintains a double-digit lead over his main rivals, but most of his supporters [55%] back his candidacy only “somewhat,” and he has yet to gain momentum among key primary voting groups or to distinguish himself as the best candidate for the party. Adding to the murkiness of the picture is that Republicans continue to be less satisfied with their candidate options than Democrats are with theirs.

The poll also finds McCain surging, while Thompson treads water and Huckabee remains stuck between the first and second tiers:

Rudy Giuliani 33
John McCain 19
Fred Thompson 16
Mitt Romney 11
Mike Huckabee 9
Ron Paul 3
Duncan Hunter 2
Tom Tancredo 1

Also interesting is the confusion among GOP voters as to just who represents their party’s “core values.” 25% percent pick Giuliani, 24% McCain, 29% choose Thompson, and 17% say Romney. To some extent this may be because there’s a good deal of confusion these days over exactly what those values are, but it probably also has to do with the candidates’ failure to take much leadership in sorting such questions out. Everybody wants to be as conservative as possible for the primary, even to the point of berating the GOP for not having been conservative enough during its recent reign of error, but the elephant in the room is that conservatism itself is in crisis.

Polling, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney | 3 Comments »

Congressman Ron Paul resoundingly won the Republican straw poll held in Sparks, Nevada. Former Governor Mitt Romney, despite campaigning in person, failed to perform well. Congressman Duncan Hunter was the only other candidate to be in attendance.

Ron Paul won the GOP presidential straw poll conducted by organizers at the Conservative Leadership Conference held at the Nugget Casino this weekend “by a large margin,” according to an organizer.

Paul won with 32 percent, McCain came in second with 17 percent, Hunter was third with 15 percent, and “Romney was in the lower numbers because people came out for his event but they just didn’t vote for him,” according to organizer and McCain operative Paul Jackson. [emphasis added]

Paul Jackson, the Republican Party’s John Madden.

Buried in the article was this delightful quote about the candidates’ pandering to the far reaches of conservative circles.

In fact, American Target Advertising Chairman Richard Viguerie, who said he was part of the strategic meetings in Salt Lake City, said Thursday night that even though he has agreed not to support Giuliani, Thompson or McCain, he’s still not close to declaring support for Romney or any other lower tier candidates because they are still actively and seriously courting conservatives. “Why would we stop the flow of flowers and candy?” he said.

Romney’s comments in Sparks, Nevada are doing just that — creating sparks. This weekend in Nevada, Romney claimed to be speaking for the “Republican wing of Republican Party,” and said he was a “real Republican.” Laughable, I know, but regardless, it prompted an outcry of responses from John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani also cited Romney’s support of the line-item veto, which he says is “unconstitutional,” and took a swipe at Senator McCain:

Here’s the truth… Straight talk?,” said Giuliani using one of McCain’s catch phrases. “You have to have a constitutional amendment to get a line item veto. If you were to try it again, like we did it last time, we would be wasting the taxpayer’s money.”

Ron Paul, Nevada, Polling, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Mitt Romney | 2 Comments »

Mitt Romney is way out in front in Iowa, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll of 405 likely Republican caucus voters.

Mitt Romney 29%
Fred Thompson 18%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Rudy Giuliani 11%
John McCain 7%
Tom Tancredo 5%
Ron Paul 4%
Sam Brownback 2%
Alan Keyes 2%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Not sure/Uncommitted 9%Survey of 405 likely Republican caucus participants was conducted October 1-3. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percentage points.

For the first time that I have seen, Mike Huckabee surpassed one of the top-tier candidates in polling. Rudy Giuliani  is running fourth behind Romney, Fred Thompson and Huckabee.

Duncan Hunter is polling behind perennial electoral loser, Alan Keyes, who is tied with Kansas Senator Sam Brownback.

(Hat tip: Aron Goldman, race42008.com)

Polling, Fred Thompson, Alan Keyes, Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney | 2 Comments »

American Research Group (ARG) released new figures from the three early states on September 30 — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Keyes, now only a few weeks into his campaign-destined-for-failure tired Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton, Colo.) in two of the early states — Iowa and New Hampshire.

Heading into the fourth quarter of fundraising, it begs the question: who will bow out next?

South Carolina, New Hampshire, Polling, Iowa | 1 Comment »

Todd Beeton has a good analysis of the most recent Fox News poll over at MyDD. This part is particularly notable:

Interestingly, while independent support for Clinton grows modestly, their support for the Republicans in match-ups against her absolutely plummets. Against Clinton, independent support for Giuliani drops 8 points, support for Thompson drops 10 points and support for McCain drops 6 points. (The undecided column is a larger beneficiary of these defections than Clinton is.) Independents flee Giuliani and Thompson against Obama as well, although in fewer numbers: 6 points and 1 point respectively. But independents’ support of John McCain actually jumps 6 points when against Barack Obama and Obama’s support falls a stunning 13 points; in fact, independents now prefer McCain to Obama 37% to 32%. But one thing is clear: no matter who he is matched up against, Rudy Giuliani is losing independents.

This is the story that the major media are not talking about. There is absolutely a relationship between McCain’s strong performance among independents and his weak numbers among Republicans. It’s becoming ever-more clear that there is something of a zero-sum relationship between Republican support and independent support. And the big victim of that equation right now is Rudy Giuliani, who is watching his numbers among independents drop even as he solidifies his position at the top of the GOP field. The one is a consequence of the other.

The narrative on Giuliani is that he’s a “moderate” or a “liberal” Republican; this notion derives almost entirely from his nominal pro-choice stance and his failure to be as full-throatedly anti-gay as his GOP rivals. He has worked hard to overcome this disadvantage among primary voters, running as perhaps the most savagely partisan Republican in the race. So far this strategy has helped him keep his edge in the fight for the nomination, but it’s undermining his general election chances — hardly a surprise, given the pervasive anti-GOP sentiment in the nation at large.

The fact is that while Rudy may be a “moderate” on abortion, he is an extremist conservative on other very important issues. He is a vocal Iran war hawk; his foreign policy team is full of unreconstructed neocons — most notorious is Norman Podhoretz, but the others are just as bad — and he plainly offers nothing but a hyper-aggressive form of Bushism abroad. His judicial advisors are right-wing extremists; his economic advisors have him wandering the country making ludicrous claims derived from the crackpot theories of the voodoo economists; and he’s deeply out of touch on health care, babbling about “socialized medicine” when most Americans want to see a plan for government-backed universal health insurance. Giuliani is in many ways the most right-wing of the Republican candidates. He is simply not in the American mainstream. If independents are sensing this, it’s hardly a surprise that he’s losing them.

Polling, Rudy Giuliani | 1 Comment »

Bad news for Mitt Romney: according a new CNN poll, Rudy Giuliani has caught up to him in the Granite State:

The survey, released Wednesday, shows the former Massachusetts Governor drawing support from 25 percent of Republican primary voters to 24 percent for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

That statistically-insignificant, 1 point margin is a major change from CNN/WMUR’s last New Hampshire poll, taken in July, when Romney held a comfortable 14 point lead over Giuliani.

Full poll results here (pdf).

Update: Just wanted to note this analysis from the article:

So what’s the reason behind Romney’s 9 point drop here in New Hampshire?

“Romney maintains an advantage over Giuliani among Granite State conservatives; but Giuliani has regained the lead among moderate and liberal Republicans while Romney falls to third place with that group,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. In July, Romney had the edge among both moderates and conservatives.

A plurality see Giuliani as the most likeable and the most electable Republican in the field, while McCain is seen as having the right experience to be president.

For the life of me, I’ll never understand how anyone can find Rudy Giuliani “likeable,” but maybe the “electable” part has more to do with his recent gains. Will Romney, just days after taking a Viguerie-esque hard conservative tack, make a new effort to appeal to moderate voters? Will people still think of Giuliani as a moderate if he keeps sounding just as belligerent as the Bush administration? Will Fred Thompson remember what he had for breakfast this morning? Tune in next time, to As the Republican World Turns…

New Hampshire, Polling, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | No Comments »

A new AP/Ipsos poll seems to support David’s point about the fluidity of the GOP race so far:

White men, conservatives, evangelicals and other pivotal building blocs of the Republican Party are divided among its leading contenders for president, leaving the race for the 2008 GOP nomination highly fluid, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are each attracting significant support from core GOP groups, based on the poll conducted this week. Even Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign has been staggered by money problems and staff shake-ups, is backed by solid shares of suburban, college-educated and Midwestern Republican voters.

The roughly one-third of Republicans in the poll who said they disapprove of the job President Bush is doing were gravitating around all three of those hopefuls. Overall, the survey underscores that no contender has yet to convincingly make the case that he is the candidate for change that so many voters want as the party searches for its identity and a successor to Bush.

The horserace:

Giuliani 24%
Thompson 19%
McCain 15%
Romney 7%

Results like this, and the general feeling that the race remains unsettled, suggest that McCain remains very much in the mix, despite his disastrous few months. Meanwhile, while Giuliani leads the field, he has nothing like the clear command of the race that Hillary Clinton does on the Democratic side.

Oh, and I couldn’t resist noting this anecdote from the article:

Lisa Baudoin, 40, a student and homemaker in Sugarland, Texas, said she is a conservative and supporting Thompson because of his views on abortion and immigration. She said she does not like Giuliani’s more moderate immigration stance or his three marriages, and doesn’t like McCain’s opposition to the U.S. torturing terrorism suspects.

“How are you going to get information? They don’t play nice. Why do we have to if no one else is,” she said.

Awesome. Your 2008 GOP: Party of Torture.

Fred Thompson, Polling, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney | 3 Comments »

A few days after the latest Republican debate and the official Hollywood entry of Fred Thompson into the race, the actor/lobbyist is gaining strength in the polls. USA Today/Gallup has Thompson up 3 points since August, while Rudy Giuliani continues to lead and John McCain seems to have stopped the bleeding:

Giuliani 33%
Thompson: 22%
McCain: 15%
Romney: 10%
Huckabee: 5%
Brownback: 2%
Paul: 1%
Tancredo: 1%
Hunter: * (ouch)

I could use this as an opportunity to once again go into my Huckabee Is Not a Frontrunner routine, but you get the point. He’s still looking good for a VP slot, though.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll shows a much bigger bounce for Thompson, landing him at the top of the pile:

Thompson 26%
Giuliani 22%
Romney 13%
McCain 12%
Huckabee 6%

Rasmussen comments:

Thompson’s gains since announcing have come primarily among conservatives likely to vote in a Republican Primary. In polling completed since his announcement, Thompson leads Giuliani by 12-points among conservative primary voters. That’s up from a five-point edge before the announcement. Conservatives account for more than 60% of GOP primary voters. Two-thirds of Republican voters view Giuliani as politically moderate or liberal.

In addition to Thompson’s announcement, Giuliani may have lost some ground by proclaiming on CNN that illegal immigration is not a crime.

This is significant, and in terms of the race for the nomination, good news for Thompson. His previous bounce had come thanks almost entirely to moderates, who had been drifting away from the hyper-partisan Giuliani. Now Hollywood Fred is getting conservatives, too. As the Glenn Beck immigration flap illustrates, Giuliani may be having an increasingly difficult time threading the needle between his conflicting images (is he a liberal or a hardliner?) – if so, Thompson stands to benefit.

Mike Huckabee, Polling, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney | 3 Comments »