The latest ABC News/Washington Poll confirms what we’ve seen in other polls; the Republican race for the nomination, long seen as stable, is incredibly fluid right now:
Three weeks before the first contest of the 2008 campaign, Republicans remain sharply divided over whom to choose as their presidential nominee and which of the five leading candidates best embodies the core values of a fractured GOP, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to lead the Republican field in the national poll, but his support is at its lowest point this year. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, has more than doubled his support among likely GOP voters since early November and runs just behind Giuliani.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) also draw double-digit support in the new poll, hinting at a potential free-for-all when the voting begins in Iowa and New Hampshire early next month.
Additionally, Republicans seem ambivelent about which of the front-running candidates they think is best suited to lead the party in 2008:
Although many of the candidates have been campaigning for nearly a year, the Republican electorate appears more fragmented now than at any previous point in the race. Asked which candidate best reflects the core values of the Republican Party, 18 percent said McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee were each cited by 16 percent, 14 percent picked Romney, and 13 percent named Thompson. As if to punctuate the confusion, 16 percent said they had no opinion.
There was a similar lack of consensus about who is the GOP’s most honest and trustworthy candidate, or who is tops on pivotal social issues, such as abortion and same-sex civil unions. But Giuliani, long the national front-runner, continues to have wide advantages in being perceived as the strongest leader and most electable of the GOP candidates. He also holds narrow advantages on who is best able to handle terrorism and the economy.
Much of this “confusion”, for lack of a better word, will clear itself up once the voting starts and different groups begin to rally around a single candidate. Moreover, Huckabee’s rise in the polls at this early stage is likely to benefit Romney and/or Giuliani as mainline Republicans look to find a candidate to stop the rise of a man whose entire agenda seems to be built around religious conservativism. And, quite frankly, a sizable number of people will jump on the bandwagon of whoever appears to be the most likely to win.
It looks like it’s going to be a bumpy ride between now and then, though.
