Inside the Republican Vote for President (New Gallup Poll)

Gallup ^ | 4/30/07

[areafiftyone]

April 30, 2007

Inside the Republican Vote for President

Giuliani's support highest among moderate and liberal Republicans

by Frank Newport

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republican presidential candidates square off in their first official debate on May 3, 2007, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The basic structure of the Republican race has been fairly fixed for several months. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is the frontrunner, Arizona Sen. John McCain is in second place, and there is a rough three-way tie for third place between announced candidate Mitt Romney and unannounced candidates Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson.

To provide more insight into the pattern of support for these candidates among Republicans, this analysis is based on an aggregation of the last three polls in which the Republican test ballot was included. These polls were conducted in March and April, and includes a total of 1,252 Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents.

Republican preferences for the 2008 presidential nomination across this aggregate are as follows:

Ideology

One of the most intriguing issues in open-nomination battles is the question of how support for the various candidates differ between conservative Republicans and moderate/liberal Republicans. In the race for the 2008 Republican nomination, the candidates span a relatively wide spectrum of views, particularly in terms of their positions on social issues. This is important given the much-discussed need for candidates to appeal to conservative Republicans who form a key voting bloc in several of the early primary states. At the same time, Gallup data show that while conservatives are the dominant ideological group within the Republican Party, there are a substantial number of moderate/liberal Republicans that cannot be ignored.

The data presented in this table are based on responses to a basic ideology question: "How would you describe your political views -- very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal?" For the purposes of this analysis, Republicans have been divided into two groups, those who are very conservative or conservative, and those who are moderate, liberal, or very liberal:

Support for Republican Candidates by Ideology March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	Conservative Republicans	Moderates/Liberal Republicans
	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	31	41
John McCain	19	22
Fred Thompson	13	7
Newt Gingrich	11	4
Mitt Romney	8	3

Frontrunner Rudy Giuliani does a bit better among the combined group of moderate/liberal Republicans than he does among conservative Republicans. On the other hand, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney receive more support from conservative Republicans than from moderate and liberal Republicans. John McCain's support is relatively constant across these two groupings.

Despite these differences, the basic pattern of the race remains the same among both groups. Giuliani leads, and McCain is in second place, regardless of whether one is looking at conservative or moderate/liberal Republicans.

Still, it appears that the two leaders -- Giuliani and McCain -- are more separated from the rest of the pack among moderate/liberal Republicans. Among conservative Republicans, it appears there is more of an interest in voting for alternative candidates, suggesting that conservative Republicans may be less happy with the two leaders than are Republicans who identify themselves as moderate or liberal.

Region

The two candidates with roots in the West -- John McCain (Ariz.) and Mitt Romney (Utah) -- are better positioned in the West on a relative basis than they are in other regions of the country. Giuliani (N.Y.) does less well in the West -- so much that he is essentially tied with McCain. Romney falls in third place (although not statistically ahead of Gingrich or Thompson).

Support for Republican Candidates by Region March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	East	Midwest	South	West
	%	%	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	41	35	36	27
John McCain	24	21	14	25
Fred Thompson	7	8	15	9
Newt Gingrich	6	6	11	9
Mitt Romney	6	4	3	13

Fred Thompson (Tenn.) does best in the South. McCain does worse in the South, leading to a situation in which he and Thompson are nearly tied for second place behind Giuliani in that region.

Giuliani does slightly better in his home region of the East.

Age

All five of the Republican candidates being analyzed in this report are 60 years of age or older, ranging from Mitt Romney at 60 to John McCain at 70. Newt Gingrich is 63, Fred Thompson is 64, and Rudy Giuliani is 62. There is, it follows, no natural pattern by which a candidate's relative youth might provide him with a particular strength among younger Republicans.

Still, the data show that despite his 62 years, Rudy Giuliani has higher support among younger Republicans, with a 13-point difference between his support among 18- to 29-year-olds and those who are 65 and older. This could spell trouble for Giuliani, since most studies show that younger voters are least likely to actually show up at the polls to vote.  

Support for Republican Candidates by Age March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	18- to 29- years-old	30- to 49- years-old	50- to 64- years-old	64 years and older
	%	%	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	41	36	34	28
John McCain	16	22	18	23
Fred Thompson	5	12	11	12
Newt Gingrich	4	6	12	14
Mitt Romney	3	6	7	9

The appeal of several of the other candidates skews old. Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson do better among older Republicans than among younger Republicans.

John McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest president to take office in U.S. history, does not do significantly better among older Republicans than he does among those who are younger.

Education

There are no real differences in support for candidates by education. Those Republicans who have college or postgraduate degrees do not appear to be substantially different than those who have less education in their support for the various candidates:

Support for Republican Candidates by Education March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	High school	Some college	College grad	Postgrad
	%	%	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	35	34	33	37
John McCain	17	21	24	23
Fred Thompson	11	9	13	12
Newt Gingrich	10	8	7	7
Mitt Romney	3	8	7	8

Gender

There are no women running for the Republican nomination at this point, so -- unlike the case with the Democratic presidential field -- there is not an obvious hypothesis about a particular candidate getting more support among GOP women than among GOP men.

Support for Republican Candidates by Gender March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	Men	Women
	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	31	38
John McCain	20	21
Fred Thompson	13	8
Newt Gingrich	10	7
Mitt Romney	7	5

 

The data show that Republican men tend to be more varied in their choices for the Republican nominee than their female counterparts. Frontrunner Rudy Giuliani's appeal is somewhat higher among female Republicans than among male Republicans by about seven points.

There is no difference by gender in choice of John McCain. His support is nearly equal among Republican men and women. Republican women are slightly more likely than men to refuse to make a choice at this point.

Religion

Being religious in American society today is correlated with being conservative, so it is not surprising to find that the basic patterns of support broken out by church attendance share some similarities to the vote by ideology.

Support for Republican Candidates by Church Attendance March – April 2007 Aggregate of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents
	Weekly	Monthly	Seldom/ never
	%	%	%
Rudy Giuliani	29	36	40
John McCain	19	25	19
Fred Thompson	11	10	11
Newt Gingrich	10	7	8
Mitt Romney	10	5	4

 

Rudy Giuliani does slightly better among those who seldom or never attend church, although he still leads among weekly church goers.

Mitt Romney does slightly better among frequent church attendees, though the differences are not statistically significant. Romney is a Mormon, and Gallup research indicates that Mormons have a higher level of active religiosity (that is, church attendance) than most other major religious groups in America today. Highly religious Republicans may tend to support Romney because they identify with his religious background, or it could more simply be a pattern driven by the underlying relationship between conservatism and frequency of church attendance.

There is no discernible pattern of relationship between church attendance and support for McCain, Thompson, or Gingrich.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,252 national adults, aged 18 and older, who identified as Republicans, or as independents who lean to the Republican Party, derived from polls conducted between March 23 through April 15, 2007. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. Results based on subgroups are associated with higher sampling error. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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[tkathy]

Looking forward to it. The rubber’s hitting the road.

[popdonnelly]

IMHO, you’d be better off pushing Giuliani to the right than trying to replace him with a “true conservative”.

[LimberJim]

Thank you, af. It’s interesting reading.

[piceapungens]

RINOs in the top 2, it tells you a lot about the modern GOP.

[areafiftyone]

I think its going to be a very tight race - both primary and general election.

[areafiftyone]

You are quite welcome. The polls have been pretty consistent for a long time.

[LimberJim]

I pay most attention to the South in the polls, and they are mirroring what I’m seeing for myself.

[Little Ray]

This is the primary - he ain’t going any further to the right. After the primary, its a force march to the Left.

[ex-snook]

Who woulda thunk it. Well that confirms this conservative’s opinion never to vote for Giuliani [just as no conservative should].

A liberal Republican is a Democrat.

[republicanwizard]

By your standard, every modern Republican Presidential candidate was a RINO. You would have to go back to Benjamin Harrison.

[piceapungens]

Actually I can name several who aren’t: Hunter, Tancredo, Paul. And the last truly conservative preseident was Silent Cal.

[AntiFed]

Hunter lost me on his anti-trade stance. He may be conservative on social issues but his economic policy is right from the demonrat play book. Then again, Bush had fun with protectionism and increased federal social spending faster than anyone since LBJ so I’m not sure I was expecting anything better.

[Jake The Goose]

I was a little surprised at how big Rudy’s lead is among the young voters - 19-29 - HUGE LEAD.

Interesting bunch of numbers.

Whether you like him or not - Rudy looks very very strong.

I maintain that only Fred Thompson is a threat to Rudy.

I don’t think the other show enough to come out of the pack.

But - I voted for Perot - so what do I know.

[Ancesthntr]

Once Thompson declares (which I believe will occur next month sometime), he’ll get virtually all of Newt’s, Brownback’s, Huckabee’s and Hunter’s support. He’ll get a bunch of people to defect from Romney and McCain. That’ll push him up to #2, or at the least a very strong #3, at which point he’ll begin to get lots of money and press coverage. He’ll motivate the conservative base of the party, and I think that he’ll get the nomination. Rudy is just too liberal to do well out West and down South, and McCain has enemies everywhere (particularly among loyal Republicans - whom he has dissed at almost every opportunity by being a “maverick” (i.e. a media whore) - and those who respect the 1st 2 Amendments to the US Constitution.

[wastedyears]

Anybody know what channel on the east coast this will be on? Also, what time?

[garv]

All these polls are interesting, but they tell me nothing other than Giuliani has settled at @35% across the board.

All the demographic data is meaningless because they don't delve into the participants knowledge of the candidates. If 31% of self-identified conservatives support Giuliani, how many of those same "conservatives" know his positions on the issues?

There have been a couple previous polls that asked those questions and the results showed that large majorities of self-identified conservatives and regular church goers either misidentify or don't know Giuliani's positions.

Everyone better hope that a candidate that Republicans can unite around emerges from the pack because right now these numbers are a disaster

[areafiftyone]

Rudy and Obama lead among young voters BIG TIME! There was a huge poll done and they are tops among young voters.

[twonie]

I am not saying the Hunter/Hunter/etc. supporters are wrong, but it really appears that there are not enough of them to put these people in the running. And if there are not enough of them to get one of them into the running, there are certainly not enough to get one of them into the White House and to take the Senate and the House. I don’t wish any of them any ill (well, maybe one or two!), but I just don’t see the numbers moving. And thanks for the post.

[BlackbirdSST]

Hunter lost me on his anti-trade stance.

So you like paying for all that chinese poison do ya? I'm not sure I'll join you in that ride to death. Blackbird.