The latest CBS/New York Times poll is out and it shows that Republican voters don’t find anything impressive in any of the men running for their party’s Presidential nomination:
Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Not one of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate, the poll found. And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney.
(…)
[T]here is no clear leader in the Republican race: Mr. Giuliani was the choice of 22 percent of respondents, Mr. Huckabee of 21 percent, and Mr. Romney of 16 percent. Mr. McCain and Fred D. Thompson each had 7 percent.
Of course, as the Times points out, national polls have almost no predictive value at this point in the race. What matters is what happens in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the states beyond that once the primaries begin on January 3rd.
At this point, though, it’s looking like the Republican race is going to boil down to a race between Rudy Giuliani and “someone else.”
The interesting thing is that, over the course of the past year, that “someone else” has changed at least twice already. First, it was John McCain who was thought to be the alternative that anti-Giuliani forces would rally behind. When he faded in the spring, Fred Thompson’s name started to rise as the perceived conservative alternative; but he wasted the summer and didn’t announce until after Labor Day. In August, Mitt Romney won the Iowa Straw Poll and took what remains a fairly substantial lead in the polls in New Hampshire and he started looking like the candidate that would give Rudy a run for his money. Now, Romney has faded and Huckabee has surged.
The question is, with a month to go before the voting starts, is Huckabee peaking too early ?
Seventy-six percent of Republican respondents say they could still change their minds about whom to support, compared with 23 percent who say their decision is firm
What that means is that the Huckabee surge could fade quickly, especially when fiscal conservatives start realizing just who Tax Hike Mike really is.
