Back in May, there were those, including me, who thought that Fred Thompson was going to run away with the Republican nomination. Conservatives, it seemed, were eager to rally around a candidate who at least seemed like a new Ronald Reagan, and nobody was happy with the candidates that were in the race.
Now, though, it’s fairly clear that Thompson’s campaign is in trouble:
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).
As the article notes, there are some good signs — Thompson still holds on to leads in South Carolina and Florida and there is time, though not much, to turn things around — but the overall trends don’t look good at all.
