With a January 3rd caucus, there isn’t much time to change the dynamics in Iowa before the Holidays make it next to impossible to campaign. So, let’s look at the lay of the land.
Mike Huckabee 29%
Mitt Romney 24%
Rudy Giuliani 13%
Fred Thompson 9%
Ron Paul 7%
John McCain 7%
Tom Tancredo 6%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Huckabee is up 17% since the October poll. Fred Thompson has dropped into fourth place. And Ron Paul has reached parity with John McCain, who is focusing on New Hampshire.
Looking at the trend lines, we’re looking at a Huckabee win, with Romney in second place. But third place is up for grabs. The recent scandals are particularly troubling for Giuliani because they erode his primary area of support.
Giuliani, the poll’s third-place finisher, is seen as the most electable of the candidates and also has a slight edge as the most effective negotiator and the best able to bring Republicans and Democrats together.
Anything that erodes Giuliani’s perceived electability has the potential to catastrophically erode his numbers in Iowa, where people lack a natural affinity for his style of politics.
Thirty-four percent of likely caucusgoers see him as one of the worst choices for the Republican nomination. Paul ranks second in that category, at 26 percent.
…Giuliani is seen by more likely caucus participants as the most ego-driven of the candidates.
If Giuliani’s support collapses in Iowa and McCain makes no serious attempt to pick up his voters, it could benefit Fred Thompson. But Thompson’s campaign has been in free-fall, as he is increasingly seen as a lackluster campaigner who is just mailing it in. Given Ron Paul’s money, his upward trajectory, and his anti-immigration message, he seems poised to gain ground on both Thompson and Giuliani. It’s also not unlikely that Tancredo voters will make Paul their second choice, enabling Paul to outperform his actual support.
As of this moment, the most likely scenario is a Huckabee/Romney/Paul finish, with Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain bunched in 4th to 6th place.
How will that set things up for New Hampshire? What will the media narrative be in that circumstance?
You tell me.
For somebody who said less than a week ago:
You sure have been on a roll lately!
I think the Republican primary season is going to turn out strikingly similar to this year’s college football season : there’s going to be major upsets, nobody is going to run the table, and at the end of it all there are going to be serious questions about who actually deserves to win the title.
Do you have any poll data on the Republicans in New Hampshire? I would have to imagine that Giuliani’s popularity plummets relative to the proximity to New York, but am curious if poll data bears that out.
As elsewhere, both Rudy and Hillary are dropping like stones in New Hampshire.
I figure December 1st is the right time to start blogging on the primaries.
Well, I think it has been interesting for a long time, but I was busy predicting things that didn’t happen until last month.
Rudy has messed up my predictions for NH, I thought it was him or Romney followed by Paul. Now its anyones game there. He has so many flaws I didn’t think his followers would care about a little government waste or sex. He had to go combine them.
I think if Iowa finishes with Huckabee / Romney (which appears to be the most likely) then that gives the Huckster enough of a boost to pull into 2nd in NH behind .
I think Huckabee and Paul are the two Republican candidates who have the most remaining potential for upward mobility and could benefit from early success.
2nd in NH behind Mitt, that is.
I think it is likely that Huckabee and Romney will finish 1st/2nd in all or nearly all of the January races, so that the race will essentially be defined as a two-candidate race going into the February 5 primaries.
On February 5, Romney should win NY and California, but Huckabee will win enough states (in the south and border states, possibly Colorado and Montana) to continue to be legitimate. Romney probably wins in the end, but it will be close (because of delegate apportionment rules, the south is overrepresented relative to population. If Thompson and McCain stick around till February 5 and win their home states, they might actually have enough delegates to be the balance of power at the convention.
This obsession of the GOP for a faux national security candidate that overrides their own platform…family values, small govt, fiscal responsibility has an interesting perfect storm brewing in Rudy. And if indeed the GOP wake up and realize that’s Rudy’s record does not match the candidate’s hype and Iowa tosses him out with the dishwater; if they indeed declare they will not tolerate any more degenerate leadership behavior will they rise like a lynchmob and look next to Romney & Huckabee’s record as well? Just sayin’ Rudy’s demise could mean the Rip VanWinkle part of the GOP could be waking up to take their party back. (ok, so I still believe in Santa as well)