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Posted on 12/29/2007 9:12:48 AM PST by Reaganesque
WASHINGTON -- While public polls show Mike Huckabee leading Mitt Romney in Iowa, a new survey of an oversized sample shows Huckabee slipping and no longer ahead of Romney.
A private corporate interest commissioned a phone bank survey of 15,000 Iowans who say they will attend Republican presidential caucuses Jan. 3. It showed Romney with 30 percent and Huckabee at 26 percent. Sen. John McCain was third with 12 percent and Rudy Giuliani fourth at 9 percent. Fred Thompson had only 1 percent, with slightly fewer votes than Rep. Ron Paul (also at 1 percent).
Numbers for both Huckabee and Romney dipped sharply when Iowans were asked their second choice. In contrast, McCain was the leading second-choice candidate for both Huckabee and Romney voters.
DOLE VS. HUCK
Unexpected late intervention by Bob Dole in the Iowa Republican caucuses confirms that Mike Huckabee may have blundered by assailing President George W. Bush's "arrogant bunker mentality" in international affairs.
"Why have you joined the 'Bush bashers'?" Dole asked in a letter to Huckabee that he made public. Dole, until now neutral in the 2008 contest, called Huckabee's critique of Bush policy in Foreign Affairs magazine a "perfect example of 20-20 hindsight."
Dole, who won the 1996 Iowa caucuses en route to the presidential nomination, told Huckabee that Iowans would not approve of his attack on Bush (who still gets 80 percent approval from Republicans). He concluded the letter with typical Dole humor: "P.S. I lost the General [election] in '96, so what do I know?"
OBAMA OVER MCCAIN?
Sen. Barack Obama's rise against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination leads some of the party's strategists to celebrate the prospect for a better match-up against Sen. John McCain as the Republican nominee.
"I'll take a 47-year-old [Obama] against a 72-year-old [McCain] any day," is the private comment of one prominent Democrat who long ago made Sen. Clinton his pick for president. Like many insiders of both parties, he considers McCain -- on the rise for the Republican nomination -- as the GOP candidate most likely to defeat Clinton.
A footnote: The fluid quality of the Iowa Democratic caucuses does not rule out the possibility of a first-place finish there Jan. 3 by John Edwards. That would be more damaging for Obama than it would be for Clinton, even if she finished third in Iowa.
CHARLIE'S MONEY
Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel is on pace to raise over $7 million in campaign money in his first two years as chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, far outstripping anybody ever to hold that post.
Rangel reported contributions of $2.7 million for the first three quarters of the 2007 election off-year. His Republican predecessor, Rep. Bill Thomas, raised $3.8 million for his entire six years as chairman. The previous Republican chairman, Rep. Bill Archer, took in less than $1 million in his six years.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the largest contributors to Rangel this year have been Citigroup, $59,950; MetLife, $50,500; and JPMorgan Chase, $37,600. MetLife is a major corporate opponent of repealing the estate tax, whose retention is firmly supported by Rangel.
EARMARK NON-REFORM
In the closing hours of the 2007 congressional session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to permit a vote on two amendments to the omnibus appropriations bill proposed by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn that would have transferred funds earmarked for special projects by individual members of Congress to wider uses.
One Coburn amendment would have redirected earmarked money to improving deficient roads and bridges, typified by the interstate highway bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that collapsed Aug. 1. His other proposal would have shifted funding to health care for women and children.
A footnote: Among thousands of earmarks approved in the omnibus bill was $200,000 for a "post office museum" in downtown Las Vegas requested by Nevada's Sen. Reid.
Novak knows this poll is useless. He’s pushing it for effect, not because there is any likelihood it is true.
That said, it won't mean much if Rudy is still perceived as the automatic winner in FL, CA, NY, CT, IL, RI, PA, NV, and half a dozen other Feb. primaries. What Mitt cannot do is lose two of the four, and he can't come in third anywhere in the first four.
Most other polling, including Ras, has Huck slipping (as I knew he would). He was a back-street flirtation, not even a date, let alone a marriage proposal for most primary voters.
“one prominent Democrat” = Bob Schrum.
Ya, but could he carry Ohio?
“Fred Thompson had only 1 percent”
Ok, so we know this poll is bogus
Who is the “ private corporate interest “ , I wonder ?
Perhaps funded by Romney ?
I can believe Fred Thompson has a smaller percentage than Mitt and Huck, but not one percent. That just seems too small to be believable, especially with all of his recent campaigning in Iowa.
If one will look at history [in the last 70+ yrs.], NO sitting Senator or Congressman ever wins the WH. Last time a sitting Senator won the WH was Kennedy. He didn't win the WH his Daddy bought it for him.
You watch Ras, he’ll be moving Huckster down and Cain up...what a con.
you could almost think that Novak is giving him(FT 1%) the benefit of low expectations, but yesterday I heard Novak on Hannity and he was completely dismissive, saying Thompson had failed to measure up to the scripted character of Law and Order (or whatever TV show he’s on)
A bit of information about oversampling in polling.
First, folks who are interested in polling should know this formula
MOE = 0.98 / (sqrt) N
Margin of Error, and N is sample size. That margin of error is 95% confidence, meaning a survey of every single voter would yield a result within the MOE 95 times out of 100.
In other words, 600 samples gives you an MOE of 4%
It is accurate . . . PROVIDED . . . the samples taken are truly “representationally random”.
That is the true question about sampling. There will, this election cycle, be more Dems sampled than GOP because that was the mix that showed up in 2006 if the pollster aims at a mix, or there maybe be more Dems than GOP if that is how a random sample self identifies during the phone call.
This is the issue addressed by oversampling. An N = 15000 addresses the possibility that the calling prefixes selected to be representationally random no longer are (because of some local factory that shut down and changed the nature of a neighborhood). As N increases, errors in how representative a sample is decreases. What this poll suggests is that the pollsters doing standard surveys have outdated profiles of neighborhoods. This is VERY POSSIBLE on the GOP side because there has not been a GOP primary of significance for 8 years. That is a lot of time for neighborhoods to change.
I’ve been suspicious of Novak ever since the Valerie Plame fiasco - he left the entire administration twisting in the wind when he knew Armitage was the one who gave him Plame’s name. He has an agenda, and I regard all of his pronouncements with a grain of salt.
Novak is 76 years old. He has been doing politics for 50+ years. He has no agenda focused on the current flavor of the week 4th place candidate of a party that is in the minority. He got some interesting information and reported it. At 76 he works for fun. Could have retired long ago.
The professor (LS) was right as rain in ‘04 and dead wrong in ‘06. So, apparently he’s only prescient in years which, when divided by four, render a whole number quotient.
I suggest you wait 3 days before buying into anything LS says.
And don’t believe anything he says about the Stock Market - ever!
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