Below The Beltway

The latest poll of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire has good news for Ron Paul and bad news for Fred Thompson:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson has skidded into sixth place in a new CNN/WMUR poll of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, edged out by ex-Libertarian and anti-war congressman Ron Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney topped the poll, widening a lead he has held for months in neighboring New Hampshire, while Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani were running close in the second and third spots.

The CNN/WMUR poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire between Wednesday and Sunday. Pollsters surveyed 404 Republican voters for the survey, which had a sampling error of 5 percentage points.

(…)

[T]he percentage of support for Paul grew from 4 percent to 8 percent, putting him fourth among the GOP contenders in the Granite State.

The Texas congressman, who once ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, has gained notice as the sole advocate of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq among the GOP field — and he raised eyebrows in Washington earlier this month when supporters claimed to have raised $4.3 million in a single day of online fund-raising. The figure can’t be independently confirmed until Federal Election Commission reports are filed at the end of the year.

The results, then are as follows:

1. Mitt Romney — 33%
2. Rudy Giuliani — 16%
3. John McCain — 16%
4. Ron Paul — 8%
5. Mike Huckabee — 5%
6. Fred Thompson — 4%

This would seem to suggest that the television and radio advertisements that the campaign started running in the Granite State are starting to pay off. More importantly, though, these poll results clearly aren’t a fluke; they’re consistent with the latest polls from CBS/NY Times, The Boston Globe, and Marist.

The trends are moving in the right direction, but there needs to be a sustained move into double digits within the next several weeks if this is really going to develop into the opportunity that it could be.

On that note, I’ve been keeping an eye on the numbers on Intrade and the trend there has been going down since the beginning of November

New Hampshire represents an opportunity for this campaign to really turn into something, but it needs to do better than 4th place for that to happen.

Update: The other factor worth noting is Romney’s surge in the poll, increasing his lead by eight percentage points in two months, while he continues to poll well in Iowa. Republicans have spent several months assuming Giuliani was the man to beat, this seems to indicate that they should have been focusing on Romney.