Posted on 03/15/2007 9:18:09 AM PDT by areafiftyone
If you’re a fan of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) you probably can’t believe all the good news surrounding the Presidential hopeful. He leads the Republican Primary polls, has the highest favorability rating of all candidates, and leads every Democrat in general election match-ups.
Rasmussen Reports recently conducted a national telephone survey that yielded another good dose of polling data for “America’s Mayor.” When we asked Likely Voters if they would “definitely” vote for or against leading Presidential candidates, more voters said they would definitely vote for Giuliani than against. The opposite was true for every other candidate in the survey including Senator Hillary Clinton (D), Senator John McCain (R), Senator Barack Obama (D), and former Senator John Edwards (D).
Thirty-one percent (31%) said they’d definitely vote for Giuliani while 28% said they’d definitely vote against. Both those numbers were the best earned by any candidate. A plurality, 35%, said it would depend upon who Giuliani is running against.
Clinton was very close to Giuliani on the positive side of the equation—30% say they’d definitely vote for the former First Lady. However, 46% say they’d definitely vote against her. Clinton leads in polling for the Democratic nomination but trails Giuliani in general election polling.
Obama’s numbers are a little lower than Clinton’s on both extremes—28% say they’d definitely vote for him, 37% say they’d definitely vote against.
The data provides especially discouraging news for McCain and Edwards. Only 21% would definitely vote for McCain while 34% would definitely vote against him. For Edwards, the numbers are 20% for and 39% against. However, the real bad news for both men comes from the results within their own party. For McCain, just 35% of Republicans would vote for him while 20% would vote against. Edwards’ numbers among Democrats are similar—33% definitely for Edwards, 20% definitely against.
By way of contrast, 52% of Republicans would definitely vote for Giuliani. Only 8% would definitely vote against him.
With all the good news pouring in for Giuliani these days, it’s wise to remember how early in the process we are--Howard Dean was the frontrunner for much of the run-up to Election 2004.
"Have tried to avoid posting in these types of threads (as I get too worked up)...)
You are smarter than I am.
:o)
That's about the most idiotic thing I've ever seen on FR.
Um I already read that. LOL!
There is no Giuliani/Hunter war outside of FR.
You can say that again! The Real world doesn't care.
Not True.
There are many FP will vote for Rudy.
I will actively campaign for him.
So does this mean that Democrats have all of a sudden turned conservative? Or does this mean ___________ has turned Democrat?
Quick, adjust your tinfoil.
It couldn't possibly be that Giuliani actually has real, solid, enthusiastic political support by lots of actual real voters.
"If FR runs a poll"
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=172;results=1
Member Opinion:
Rudy=34.7%,
Third party/Undecided/Stay Home/Hillary, etal=65.3%
Proud to be one of the 8% left with conservative principles. If he wins the nomination I would be forced to make a different choice. But for now.........
Thanks for your thoughtful words, Pookie. There is an extraordinary amount of of anger floating around and reasoned discussion tends to get thrown out after a very few posts as the flaming and spamming starts. I was actually pushed toward Rudy by the venom being spewed at him and his supporters here - I found the bashers to be so offensive that I more or less reflexively went into defensive mode.
There are a lot of good people running who I think are not good candidates. I have gone into great detail before, but I am kind of disappointed by the field and think we as conservatives need to help fellow conservatives work their way up the political ladder. There is just no one on our end of the spectrum ready willing and able to run and win. That being said, I would happily vote for most of the Republican candidates and would definitely vote against almost any Democrat.
I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to make.
So can you or one of the other Giuliani campaigners here at FR shed some light on the subject? Why did O'Brien abruptly quit his position?
"I'm not sure I understand the point you are trying to make."
FR is a conservative site. We tend to be at least as, if not more sophisticated than, your average hausfrau taking a call at home. Voters will become more informed as time goes by.
In the meantime, the GOP's leading candidate can't even get a plurality on FR.
My point is, I don't want to lose to a Democrat in `08.
The problem with these types of "definitely vote for" and definitely vote against" polls are that with the race already so hot, people are answering based on their own game theory of how to help their candidate.
For example, I can't believe that only 52% of republicans would, in the end, for for Giuliani -- I'd expect at least 70% to do so. But I can't believe that the same or more real republicans wouldn't vote for Hunter, or Romney, or any other candidate other than McCain who a lot of people think is crazy.
So why do so many republicans insist they can't vote for one candidate, or that they aren't sure?
Well, Rudy is the only liberal candidate in the race. So of those republicans who vote liberal, there's no other first choice. Thus the 52% who definitely would support him. Meanwhile, a conservative backing Romney or Hunter would probably want to keep down the other's numbers by NOT saying they'd vote for him, and instead saying they would definitely vote AGAINST them.
But still, why don't all the conservatives say they'd be against Giuliani?
First, because a lot of them don't want to torpedo the guy who they are told will probably be the nominee. Easier to kill off the low-lying fruit in the hopes of elevating your candidate, than trashing the front-runner.
Second, each of them wants THEIR candidate to be the one who is the "only salvation" from Rudy. To sell that, they need Rudy to look dangerous, thus voting FOR Rudy to inflate him is helpful to their cause of scaring the electorate.
The Rudy people understand this, which is why their number one attack on Thompson is to scare Thompson supporters with the idea that it only helps McCain (as you can see in the FR poll, McCain is one of the few candidates that Rudy can beat on FR).
For conservatives, Rudy was the placeholder, the guy that we knew couldn't really win, but who could suck the life out of the other moderates, and be a good "placeholder" so our candidate, whoever that was, had a chance to gain traction.
Let's face it -- Duncan Hunter supporters believe he can overtake Rudy if he's the only choice, but they also knew that if Romney was also above 30% Hunter was sunk, and they knew that if Rudy got knocked down to 10% those votes were going to McCain or Romney.
So it was in their interest to keep Rudy up until the "right time".
Now they are panicking because they (not just Hunter's group, I think a lot of the groups did thi) did too well, and people are thinking Rudy can win and that's going to be bad for their candidates.
This left an opening for a guy like Fred Thompson, who in the absense of a Rudy lead probably wouldn't be considering a run. But because conservatives are scared of Rudy, Thompson is getting remarkable traction -- which isn't good for the 1%ers in the race.
I also wonder how many independents and democrats are saying they are republican to build up Rudy. If there was a democrat running that had traction and was as conservative as Rudy is liberal, I might do that to get a better opponent in case we lost.
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