The First Post-Khatami Straw Poll
Romney Surges, Rudy and Newt Up, Allen Waning, McCain Down
By machiavel Posted in Archived — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As usual, the GOP Bloggers straw poll provides a treasure trove of information, mostly in the crosstabs that we can use to assess momentum on a very granular, almost week-to-week basis. The first-place results, with last month’s in parentheses:
Giuliani 23.3% (23.6%) Gingrich 23.2% (21.2%) Romney 15.9% (13.0%) Allen 11.1% (11.2%) Tancredo 8.0% (7.0%) McCain 4.4% (6.7%) Brownback 2.5% (2.6%) Huckabee 1.2% (1.6%) Hagel 1.2% (2.7%) Frist 1.1% (1.1%) Pataki 0.2% (0.3%)
Don’t put too much stock in the topline results – those seem to depend heavily on who links to the poll. John Hawkins did this month, but didn’t last month, and that tilted things a bit in Gingrich’s favor. But what a look at the crosstabs suggests is Romney up big, Rudy and Newt consolidating their frontrunner position, Allen still fading, and the long-awaited McCain slide possibly beginning.
Read on.
Romney’s Post-Khatami Bump: His numbers are up across the board, and he’s now tops in net acceptability (percentage who see him as acceptable, minus unacceptable). Conservatives like him, his base is improbably pro-life, and he does well amongst pro-immigration conservatives, but he has generally had trouble “closing the sale” (first in acceptability, third in poll position). Incidents like the Khatami snub can move the needle with people paying attention. He gained 2.3% on the ballot with RedState readers, 2.1% on RealClearPolitics, 3.3% on Blogs for Bush, 6.0% at Frank J.’s (!), and 4.8% on HotAir. (I only shudder to think what it would have been on LGF.) These were generally accompanied by improvements on the net acceptability score in double digits.
Giuliani and Abortion: Now, this is interesting. They ask the abortion question, and though Giuliani clearly has a base with the 19% or so who think of themselves as pro-choice, he runs a strong second with pro-lifers (trailing Newt 19% to 25%). Moreover, Giuliani’s support is 2 to 1 pro-life. John McCain’s support is a tad more pro-choice, and way more pro-amnesty.
Thinking about interesting political labels, Rudy leads by two to one with pro-choicers who place themselves at a solid 8 on the conservatism scale, but support slides when their conservatism is amped up to 9 or 10, suggesting that life is a factor, but not a dispositive one, in determining support for Giuliani, and also, that only the most conservative Republicans reject Rudy.
Moreover: Right Wing News did a huge oppo dump on Rudy this month. Did it move Rudy’s numbers on Right Wing News from July? Nope. Rudy was at 51.2% to 40.1% acceptable in July (+11.1%) and now he’s at 55.4-32.0% (or +23.4% -- though he was at July levels in earlier recordings). Conservatives have heard all the bad stuff about Rudy’s past, and just don’t seem to care.
Conservative Ground Shifting to Newt. No big developments or strides in the Newt camp this month after his big jumps in July and August, but he is consolidating slightly more first place votes, likely at the expense of Allen, who has bounced back a bit favorability wise after his terrible August but is still losing first place votes. What is clear is that the field is sorting itself out with Romney a solid third and Allen slotting into fourth. Coulda been a contender…
The Field. Notice the interesting shift with the also-rans, with most of them losing ground. Is the blogosphere starting to sort itself out amongst the frontrunners? I also call attention to McCain’s generally falling percentages: down 2% on RealClearPolitics, 0.6% on RedState, and 1.7% at IMAO, but up slightly at Hot Air, and up 3% at Blogs for Bush.
Also: Frist posted double-digit acceptability increases if you look at August and September results for individual blogs, likely a factor of the Senate being out of session in August. (This struck me because it actually coincided with me moving him to the acceptable column after contemplating the awful also-rans.) He hasn’t moved his ballot number yet, but this does suggest he has potential in a post-Senate world. Contrast with McCain, who hasn’t been able to move his numbers despite having the most freedom of action to define himself in the free media. McCain could have used 2006 to define himself as “not-the-maverick-we-thought” but while he makes savvy backroom moves, his front stage antics continue to damage him irreparably.
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The First Post-Khatami Straw Poll 16 Comments (0 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
than all of them, but the general member of the public is going to look at congressman and say, "If he's that good, why isn't he a governor or senator."
I'm not a huge Pence fan, but if you morphed all of my beliefs into one person and that one person was a congressman, I'd still be wondering about their seasoning.
Words I love to hear.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
My first choice at the moment is Newt, although it is weak, but I like him because while I don't care much for his personal baggage, I do think he can be trusted on his conservatism.
I like Romney, but I am not sure his conservatism is trustworthy, he is going to have to convince me of it.
I like Rudy on a lot of the non pro life issues, I think he would be strong on security, and good on fiscal conservatism, but his position with regards to appointment of judges and Federalism may eventually be a deal breaker.
I moved Allen to the unacceptable column, I think "electibility" is a bad reason to support or not support somebody when all else is in agreement, but I think he has too much racial baggage, and whether the perception is 99% mud slinging, some of that mud is sticking, and I think at this point in time, we need to be reaching out to African American and other minority voters, and choosing a candidate with that much mud isn't going to do much to move them over. So it isn't really that I think Allen is unelectable, I just think he is a bad choice for the GOP at this point in time.
While I think this election cycle will involve candidates with lots of personal baggage, this kind of baggage is too easy a target for the opponent, and I don't think the GOP is best served.
Actually, for the first few hundred replies, Rudy was running about even. Early on, for the first 150 or so, he was actually in the negative.
I couldn't figure out why his numbers started to balloon until later. For some reason, several blogs linked to the poll on Right Wing News instead of putting it up on their own blogs and that inflated Rudy's numbers considerably for RWN. If not for those other links, I doubt if he'd be above +5 from RWN's readers.
He's a beast of a thinker and a shining star in the GOP. Definitely my favorite along with Guiliani (who has social issue drawbacks).
but I just don't care for the idea of another Souther Good Old Boy like Allen for another 8 years. He isn't much more articulate than Bush when it comes to speaking impromptu.
Romney, Rudy, and Newt can articulate the GOP message as good as anyone, especially when it comes to the GWoT.
Having these three in the race is a good thing. These candidates will all be tested by each other, and it will help whoever wins the nomination do well in the general election.
Contrast that to the Democratic primary campaign, which will be nothing but backstabbing and Kos pandering, they will eat each other alive and whoever comes out on top will be shredded by the GOP nominee. It should be fun to watch.
them all.
I also think Rudy is pretty good at it-but then he was a prosecutor for many years and had a lot of practice taking positions and defending them. I suspect he is a wicked debater, but haven't really seen him in action much.
I haven't heard Romney much at all, but have heard he is an all around good politician.
when it comes to social programs? I know he's a lefty on abortion and homosexuality, but what would he do with, say, a Medicare Rx drug bill? Would his fiscal conservatism coerce him into vetoing it? Or would his liberal social tendencies force him to be "compassionate" to all the elderlies?
On a side note, here's what MUST happen for me, if Giuliani wants my vote (and I would consider myself to be a member of the "base;" the group of people every Republican must win to get the nomination):
1. He must come out swinging on illegal immigration. No cowering. No bending to the "illegal lobby." He must innovative on this issue, and firm in what he says and does. He must prove his "strong-on-crime" credentials, with this problem.
2. He must convince me that he won't move the country further to left on social issues. I can tolerate him leaving things the way the are now. Just leave the abortion issue stagnant. But, if he even tries to push the country left, he can forget my pen even coming close to his name on the ballot.
3. He would almost assuredly get a Supreme Court nomination or 2, during even his first four years. He must convince me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he truly believes in judges like Roberts and Alito. He must show me that he wants to transform the Court, not just make a personal legacy appointment. If I feel he is just giving me rhetoric in exchange for a vote, he just keep it and I'll take my vote elsewhere.
4. He must win the support of several major Christian/Evangelical organizations. If he can't convince them of who he really is, behind closed doors, then I would most likely also have a problem with him. This may be his toughest task during the primary season.
If he can somehow manage to do all these, I'd be happy to give him my vote.
I've been in Romney's camp for a year now. I like his exectutive background. I'd love to see a Romney/Gingrich ticket. I love Newt's conservatism, but his baggage is a tad much and congressman isn't quite a strong enough resume for the top job.
My wife is involved in city politics in AZ and at the functions we attend I stump for Mitt every chance I get. I love seeing the lightbulbs go on for the people I talk to.
Voters are self-selecting. The number of ballots is trivial. The results vary widely depending on which site is hosting the poll - the Redstate numbers were different from the Rightwingnews numbers.
It might be interesting to have this poll run on Instapundit and Malkin, and see the difference between them. This would only highlight the differences between their respective readerships.
I don't think that blog readers are representative of the country as a whole, or that "right-wing" blog readers really represent the right-wing, let alone that RS readers do.
If we are really going to use these results as if they speak to political reality then machiavel would have announced that the idea of a guest worker program was dead. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Lets face it, these polls are an attempt to shape reality, not reflect it.
They might be meaningless, but they make good fodder.
think you can learn things from them.
For instance, I think they are meaningless as far as predicting "winners" but they can tell you who doesn't really have a chance, or where candidates may be weak.
I think they are mostly good for marking trends, since in general the same right leaning blogs will post links to the poll, as time moves closer to the election, you can get a good idea where trends are going.
My main issue is that bloggers as a whole tend to be better informed, know pretty much all of the candidates on some level, and have more of a clue which candidates fit them best, rather than it just being about who has the biggest name recognition (although I think a candidate looking for the presidency who doesn't have name recognition in a blogger straw poll is probably in for a rough time in the primaries). I think you can see where bloggers are trending, but you may not have much of a feel for where the party or nation as a whole is trending.
Of the activist base than, say, the MSM with their pronunciations of who's up and who's down or polls of the public at large. The activist base is what matters at this point.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
We need a CONSERVATIVE leader who can ARTICULATE the message.
Simply put the Republicans should be considering what they were going to do with their new “super majority” right now instead of considering how bad we are going to lose. The Republican Party screwed the pooch big time in these last 4yrs. There are two reasons for this in my mind and what I gather from others.
1) is Bush didn’t hold the line on Pork and spending and actually with prescription drug and that cluster f*ck the highway bill did much to destroy fiscal responsibility. And give the Dems their talking points to beat Repubs with.
2) Bush’s total lack of ability to go out rally the people and explain the WOT in terms us commoners understand. Simply if you cannot talk well enough to sell a war of survival (which the WOT is to anyone who pays attention) what kind of political leader are you?
To me these two reasons are why the people are turning their back on the Republicans. Newt I believe would thrive at both. Newt is the only proven fiscally responsible candidate so far available and “he can articulate in understandable terms both the WOT and Conservative beliefs”.
I know Newt has some baggage to tote but if we could get him in office of the president I would bet in 2010 we would be majority by far again and 2012 we would be preparing for super majority.
The rest would either be LLL’s light McCain, Hagel, Pataki or Bush Repub more of the same Giuliani, Allen, Frist ect… the exception maybe Tancredo that is a one issue horse.
Can someone please explain to me why McCain is always referred to as the GOP "frontrunner" in the MSM? Is it the media's strategy to support McCain because they know the (R) base is against him? Or did I miss a poll somewhere?
And how in the world did Hagel get on this poll? Was that a joke?
As for Brownback and Huckabee, sorry, but I don't know anything about these guys.
For the record, I'm for NEWT. GO NEWT!
If I were given the choice of Mike Pence, I'd vote for him as my first choice, hands down - no question.