Huckabee Ties Rudy In Another National Poll
Extraordinary. On the heels of today's CNN poll showing Mike Huckabee in a statistical tie nationally with Rudy comes a second national poll finding a tie, though this poll does stress that there are a huge amount who haven't made a final decision whom to support, making the GOP primary a very fluid one.
The new survey by The New York Times finds Rudy with 22% of Republicans, Huckabee with 21%, and Romney in third with 16%.
In one cautionary note for Huckabee, the poll finds that far more (43%) view Rudy as electable than say the same about Huck (13%). Rudy's principle argument to GOP primary voters has been that he's the candidate best positioned to defeat Hillary in a general election.
On the Dem side, the poll found Hillary holding a large lead, with 44% to 27% for Barack Obama and 11% for John Edwards.
Comments (10)
DTM wrote on December 10, 2007 8:04 PM:As an aside, why was the CNN poll posted without commentary on the Democratic side?
Anyway, Clinton is down 7 and Obama up 4 since the last CBS poll.
Madorsky wrote on December 10, 2007 9:18 PM:Greg,
Pretty soon, you, Eric, and the rest of the EC crew are going to have to tone down the superlatives describing Huckabee's poll numbers.
Whatever else Huckabee's rise may be (a threat to the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, for example), it is no longer shocking.
dcshungu wrote on December 10, 2007 10:06 PM:While Huckabee's rise in Iowa - he now leads the field there, according to some polls - corresponds to increased support nationally, the same cannot be said of the Democratic race. Polls in the Hawkeye State have shown Barack Obama catching up to, and in some cases overtaking, party front-runner Hillary Clinton.But the CBS News/New York Times poll of Democratic primary voters nationally found the race only somewhat closer than before, with Clinton leading Obama, 44 percent to 27 percent. That margin represents a slight narrowing since October, when Clinton held a 28-percent edge over Obama, but it also nearly mirrors the advantage she held in September.
Poll conducted until 12-9:
Clinton remains the candidate to beat. As a long-time student of electoral politics, I urge the Clinton camp not to panic and start finger-pointing. They are doing just fine. The worse they can do is to start "leaking" internal signs of disarray, like the belated revelation that they were upset with Bill for his comment about opposing the Iraq war. That was immaterial! She had already brilliantly put the issue to rest (Bill's comment and her vote for the AUMF bill), why resurrect it? Strange. Those saying that the Hillary camp is unraveling because of Obama's "surge" might be right.
The nomination is hers to lose and she might just do that unless she regains her poise...
Daniel wrote on December 10, 2007 10:16 PM:The first negative ad directly prepared by a candidate is now being aired in Iowa by the Romney campaign, attacking Huckabee on immigration. The campaign is getting hot!
dcshungu wrote on December 10, 2007 10:24 PM:TPM-EC screwed up the SC poll and are trying to make up for it by not headlining this poll that shows Hillary in a good light. I believe that they (TPM-EC) have been fair but that "mistake" was inexcusable (pulling an old poll showing HRC leading in SC). The poll was conducted after Oprah had lent her star power to Obama, so it was not surprising that Obama would be ahead. Do people who claim that TPM-EC is biased in favor Clinton have a point?
Please avoid such "mistakes." We are here to get the story as it is reflected by whatever poll. If Obama is ahead, then say so! Let's compare apples with apples.
Thanbk you.
dcshungu wrote on December 10, 2007 10:31 PM:By that poll in mt previous post, I had meant the "Insider Advantage" poll that had shown Obama beating HRC in SC...
Jesse wrote on December 10, 2007 11:20 PM:Yes...why wasn't the Hillary lead headlined. Go Hillary!!!
Dan wrote on December 10, 2007 11:49 PM:With Huckabee's rise, will people now stop writing that all of the leading candidates are chosen by the main stream media?
DTM wrote on December 11, 2007 2:59 AM:Just some casual reminders:
Clinton's peak lead in the RCP average was about 28 approximately seven weeks ago. As I write this it is now down to 16.3. There are now eight weeks until Super Tuesday. At the current rate of loss, she would have about a 3 point lead in the national polls at that point.
Of course that is just for fun, because history says that the results in the early states are likely to affect the results in the later states, so the current trends are unlikely to persist.
In fact, two economists at Brown (Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff) recently released the results of a study trying to quantify this effect. They found that voters in Iowa and NH have up to twenty times the influence of later voters due to momentum effects, and they drew the obvious implication that current polling will have limited value in predicting the eventual winner.
Michael A wrote on December 11, 2007 7:12 AM:Clinton II's national numbers are really meaningless at this point. In all the states that the candidates are active her lead is decreasing the more voters get to know her and her policies. The national numbers have to be based primarily on name recognition at this point as evidenced by the early state polls. It will be interesting to see what happens to the national numbers if she loses in Iowa and then again in New Hampshire. The race is on.
