Posted on 06/25/2007 8:58:18 AM PDT by flixxx
June 25, 2007, 0:00 a.m.
Poll Positions An untangling.
By Michael Barone
The Republican-primary electorate is fluid; the Democratic-primary electorate is viscous. That’s my conclusion when I look back over the plentiful polls that have been tracking the two electorates’ choices in this wide-open presidential race.
The shape of the Republican race has plainly changed over the past six months. In the 15 December and January polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com, Rudy Giuliani averaged a narrow 30 percent to 24 percent lead over John McCain, with 7 percent for Mitt Romney. In the 28 February and March polls, Giuliani’s lead over McCain increased to 35 percent to 20 percent, with 8 percent for Romney.
In March, Fred Thompson announced he was considering running, and in the 19 April polls, Giuliani’s lead over McCain fell to 30 percent to 19 percent, with 10 percent for Romney and 11 percent for Thompson. The 26 polls taken in May and June show yet a different picture. Giuliani still leads, but with only 26 percent; McCain, with 17 percent, is barely ahead of Thompson, at 15 percent, and trails Thompson in polls taken since Memorial Day. Romney stays at 10 percent.
The plot thickens if you look at the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Romney alone of the candidates has been buying television time there, and he sprinted ahead to leads in New Hampshire in April and in Iowa in May. His obvious strategy is to spend plenty of the large sums he has been raising in these early states and hope for a bounce that will propel him ahead in the many contests soon after. It remains to be seen — perhaps until December or January — whether Romney’s lead is sustainable when other candidates start matching his Iowa and New Hampshire ad buys. Also to be seen is whether Giuliani and McCain, who bowed out of the Aug. 15 Iowa straw poll, will skip the caucuses there, as well.
Why is the Republican-primary electorate so fluid? One reason is that none of the candidates matches, or has matched until very recently, the issue preferences of the conservative Republican base. That’s why Thompson, who seems to be a closer match, has moved up rapidly, to the point that he led Giuliani by one percent in the most recent Rasmussen poll.
Another reason is that Republican voters this cycle, like Democratic voters in 2003-04, fear their side will lose and are looking for a candidate with “electability.” Democrats last time settled on John Kerry — a miscalculation, it turned out. Republicans this time are still looking around. For that reason, Thompson’s standing in pairings against Democrats may be as important for his candidacy as anything else. He’s got to show that he’s as electable as Giuliani, who has led Democrats in most but not all polls this year.
Democrats are more confident this year, with some reason. Polls show that voters prefer a generic Democrat to a generic Republican by solid margins. And Democrats seem pretty settled in their preferences for candidates. Hillary Clinton averaged 34 percent in December-January polls, 36 percent in February, 34 percent in April, and 35 percent in May-June.
Barack Obama, at 18 percent in December-January, rose to 23 percent in February-March, then flatlined — 25 percent in April, 24 percent in May-June. John Edwards was at 12 percent in December-January, 13 percent in February-March, 16 percent in April, and 13 percent in May-June.
The Democratic electorates in the early contests are more similar to their national electorates than their Republican counterparts, with the exception of Iowa, where Edwards has been campaigning nearly nonstop since 2004. But the two most recent polls there show him slipping behind Hillary Clinton. The $400 haircuts and the $479,000 gig at the hedge fund (to study poverty, he says) seem to be hurting there.
On one thing the two sets of candidates seem to be converging. The Democrats continually attack George W. Bush, and the Republicans increasingly have critical things to say about him. All the Republicans but John McCain oppose the immigration bill he supports, and all including McCain have tried to suggest in various ways that they will prosecute the struggle against Islamist terrorists more competently than Bush. They’ll need to prove that to get nominated — and to overcome the Democrats’ generic edge in November.
© 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC
The Republican selection should firm up when Fred announces. I believe he will be the nominee barring some catastrophe.
The GOP will be as good as dead if they pass the Immigration bill. They will be arranging deck chairs after that. Nobody is going to excited to work for them any longer.
be excited
I agree. I won’t be voting Republican next year if this passes. I’m sure a lot of others feel the same way. I held my nose and voted R in 2006 but this would be the deal breaker.
Yeah, the alternative will be soooo much better-on immigration, taxes, gun control, war, foreign policy, judicial nominations. Yup, stay home or vote 3rd party, that'll teach the Republicrats a lesson!
IMHO, you vote your positive preferences in the primaries, then stand behind your party's candidate in the general so as to prevent a huge disaster. Then fight again in the next primary to impact or get rid of unacceptable pols in your own party.
Thanks for the advice. I fully intend to take it.
No, thank YOU for being a thinking human being. There are all too many here on FR who will stay home or vote 3rd party if their ideologically "pure" candidate isn't nominated. I think that this is the political equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Politics is the art of the possible, and also the art of compromise. We all have our goals, but because we live in a society with many other people, NO ONE will ever get everything they want. So you take what you can practically obtain and work to obtain the rest in bits and pieces over time - all the while fighting to make sure that your REAL opponents, the ones against you 95% of the time instead of 15% of the time, don't get the big things that they want.
I made my own mistake in 1992 by not voting for Bush 41, as much as I despised him. My one vote made no difference, as I lived in NJ at the time and it went very heavily for Clinton. But millions of disaffected Republicans stayed home or voted Perot, handing the election to Clinton and "sending those RINOs a message." Great, that message got us all the mess of the Clinton years, the high taxes, gun control, give-aways to China, the corruption, the ultra-liberal judges and Justices, the BJs in the Oval Office...and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, candidate for the Presidency in 2008. Guess what - no Clinton win in '92 = Hillary as just another corrupt lawyer.
Thanks again for thinking. Please speak and email others about this - because we've GOT to stop Hillary from winning the White House and the Dems from keeping the Congress.
Oh, one more quick thing:
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
General George S. Patton, Jr.
I’d say that this applies to politics as well as to military affairs.
You misunderstand. Your advice was to stay home or vote 3rd party. Your opinion was that it would damage the Republicans and elect Democrats. I intend to take your advice and ignore your opinion.
I hope the non-representative primary voters of New Hampshire pick a good candidate for "the rest of us", who won't get a choice by the time our Primaries come around. Otherwise, it'll be pretty hard to coalesce around a twit.
"Vote for who you like in the primary" sounds pretty good until you find that most of the candidates are gone by the time most of us in flyover land get to vote.
I'm no Bushbot - he's really screwed up on a lot of things, immigration only being the latest. But what do you think that Hillary and a Dem Congress will do on immigration? They'll flood the nation EVEN MORE with illegals (oh, excuse me, "undocumented Americans") who will vote for the Dems to be in power in OVERWHELMING numbers.
This election is a tipping point. We are near the rocks, and if we let the drunken teenagers take the helm then you can kiss the ship goodbye.
Vote how (or if) you want - that's your right. Just be aware that your choices will be increasingly narrow and distasteful if Hillary and the Dems win. Too many of the good people will be jailed, put on terror watch lists, or otherwise made ineligible for office or cowed into not running. Yes, it'll be THAT bad - she's extraordinarily power-hungry, and will do anything to obtain, increase and keep it that she can get away with. Vote, or not, knowing that.
Then the solution is to fix the primary system, not to stay home or vote 3rd party out of frustration.
Anyhow, many years the winner in Iowa and New Hampshire have a rough time winning the nomination - they spend so much time and money to win those small states that they have a bunch of trouble with the rest of the states.
Problem is, the large states would hate it, and they have the political muscle to prevent it from ever happening.
I understand that your advice was sarcastic and I took it that way. Nevertheless, I don’t see current Republican policies as the “good” you speak of. Bush has taken on so many liberal positions that I can’t distinguish between him and a Democrat anymore. He’s single handedly destroying the Republican party as Rush has so eloquently pointed out. If this amnesty bill passes then a Hillary presidency is a fait accompli whether I vote R or not. It’s time to move on to try and build a party that reflects more closely my conservative views. If that results in 8 years or more of Democratic rule, the Republican party (what’s left of it) can look back on the immigration bill as the straw that broke their back.
Bush isn’t running. All of the Republicans that I could stomach are running away from his positions - notably, Fred Thompson.
“If this amnesty bill passes then a Hillary presidency is a fait accompli...” Maybe you’re right - but then the shamnesty bill would also have to get by the House, and it looks like the Republicans there are going to kill it. Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Please understand that if the Dems win it’ll be FAR, FAR worse.
BTW, here’s some possibly good news on the Court: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1856014/posts?page=6
While I’m not thrilled with Bush possibly nominating another Justice (I’d rather have Fred do it, or Duncan Hunter), the fact that Janice Rodgers Brown is apparently on the short list simply couldn’t happen in ANY Dem administration (other than a short list for targeted character assassination).
If this amnesty bill fails then I can step back and start looking for a silver lining in the clouds. Not until then.
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