This much is clear — if Rudy Giuliani doesn’t either win or come in a strong second in Florida on the 29th, his campaign is pretty much dead.
And, if the latest Miami Herald poll is any indication, it’s time to start planning the funeral:
Rudy Giuliani has hit the skids in a Florida freefall that could shatter his presidential campaign and leave a two-man Republican contest in the state between John McCain and Mitt Romney, a Miami Herald poll shows.
Despite hovering over Florida voters for weeks, Giuliani is tied for third place with the scarcely visible Mike Huckabee in a statewide poll of 800 likely voters.
With his poll numbers slipping back home in the Northeast, Giuliani’s campaign will implode if he can’t turn it around in the six days left before Florida’s Jan. 29 vote, the final gateway before a blitz of primaries around the nation that could sew up the race.
”He may be running for president, but with these numbers he wouldn’t be elected governor of Florida,” said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, whose firm conducted the survey with Democratic pollsters Schroth, Eldon & Associates for The Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9. Alluding to the timeworn song, Conway added: “If he can’t make it there in Florida, he can’t make it anywhere.”
Asked about the 13 percent of the voters who haven’t made up their minds, pollster Rob Schroth said he didn’t expect them to fuel a Giuliani comeback.
”Giuliani for all intents and purposes has virtually no chance to win in Florida,” he said.
If Rudy goes go down, Huckabee won’t be far behind him, and the Republican race will be down to John McCain and Mitt Romney.
