According to Polls, Fred Thompson Foundering

Wash Post ^ | 11/13/07 | Chris Cillizza

[pissant]

The American electorate is a fickle mistress. Just ask former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.).

When Thompson announced his candidacy for president just after Labor Day most national polls showed him running a close second behind former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the majority of state polls had him in the top three.

No longer. Thompson's campaign has yet to take off as expected and voters -- especially in crucial early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida.

The most recent data comes from New Hampshire where two surveys were released over the weekend. The first, conducted by theUniversity of New Hampshire for the Boston Globe, put Thompson in sixth (yes, SIXTH) place with just three percent of the vote. (Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the way with 32 percent.) In a Marist University poll Thompson again took sixth place with just five percent support. To be clear, Thompson was never a frontrunner in New Hampshire but polls conducted in the run-up to his announcement and just after he formally entered the race show him regularly polling in double digits.

Thompson's shrinking support is apparent in other early states as well. The last three polls taken in Iowa put Thompson in fourth, fifth and fourth place, respectively, and his high water mark in any of those surveys is 11 percent. In Florida, too, Thompson appears to be fading. A new poll conducted for the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times showed Thompson in fifth place (eight percent) behind Giuliani (36 percent), Romney (19 percent), Arizona Sen. John McCain (12 percent) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (nine percent).

[supercat]

***How did you get to that screen?

IEM Home Page ->

2008 Presidential Nomination Markets ->

DConv08 and RConv08 Data ->

IEM Daily Price History - RConv08

I then had to copy/paste to isolate Fred Thompson's figures.

[LexBaird]

Possibly. It might make an amendment easier if there was an established model. However, if an interpretation is established or legal definition passed by Congress that the unborn are persons in the eyes of the law, then no amendment would be necessary. The 5th and 14th amendments would already suffice.

Then, what constituted justifiable homicide of unborn would be left to the States to define, as any other justifiable homicide is. “I want an abortion because I forgot to use a condom or take my Pill” would probably not pass muster for equal protection, however.

The abortion lobby knows this, of course. That’s why you see them freaking out when a Scott Peterson is up for murder: they don’t want the personhood of fetuses established in a court.

[Kevmo]

Thanks. I thought it was an Intrade screen. That explains it.

[supercat]

Then, what constituted justifiable homicide of unborn would be left to the States to define, as any other justifiable homicide is. “I want an abortion because I forgot to use a condom or take my Pill” would probably not pass muster for equal protection, however.

No, but a state that wanted to do so could make the justifiable-homicide rules large enough to drive a truck through. After all, how many pregnancies don't expose a woman to some level of risk? While abortion certainly has risks of its own, trying to put explicit measurements of risk into legislation or--even worse--into a Constitutional amendment seems to me a recipe for trouble.

Besides, I think that it's best to focus first on getting the matter returned to states, especially since one may have some allies in that task who would not support having the federal government force states to take any particular action. Pushing for the total abortion ban first would give up those allies.