Poll: Thompson On the Heels of Giuliani

[Dos Equis]

His popularity shows how weak the field is.  I bet Gore could do the same thing (enter late and become an immediate frontrunner). 

Poll: Thompson On the Heels of Giuliani

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 8:49 AM

Republican Fred Thompson gained a bump in support after his long-delayed entry in the 2008 presidential race and nearly caught front-runner Rudy Giuliani in two opinion polls released on Tuesday.

Thompson, a Hollywood actor and former senator from Tennessee, closed to within a statistically insignificant one percentage point of Giuliani in a new CNN poll after trailing the former New York mayor by seven points in last month's poll.

A CBS/New York Times poll showed Thompson climbing to within five percentage points of Giuliani, wiping out much of his 20-point lead from a month ago.

Thompson formally entered the race last week with a 24-hour campaign blitz that included a national television ad, a web site video and a public announcement tour in the early voting state of Iowa.

The former star of NBC's "Law and Order" television series, who has cast himself as a social conservative in the mold of former President Ronald Reagan, hopes to capitalize on conservative dissatisfaction with a Republican field led for months by Giuliani.

Thompson formed a committee in his home state of Tennessee in early June to test the waters for a presidential bid and shot past other top contenders like Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in national polls even before he formally entered the race.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll showed Giuliani with a 29 percent to 28 percent lead over Thompson. McCain registered at 15 percent and Romney at 11 percent, near their measurements last month.

The CBS/New York Times poll had Giuliani leading Thompson by 27 percent to 22 percent. Giuliani dropped sharply from his 38 percent support among Republicans last month.

McCain, who has suffered from staff shake-ups and poor fundraising while defending President George W. Bush's policies on immigration and Iraq, saw a six-point rise from the last poll to 18 percent.

Romney saw little benefit from his win in last month's Iowa straw poll, earning the support of 14 percent -- one point above where he was last month.

The CNN poll and the CBS/New York Times poll both had margins of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Romney leads Republicans in state polls in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which provide the first two big tests on the road to the November 2008 election. Political strategists caution national polls, particularly this early in a presidential cycle, are often a reflection of name recognition.

Thompson is well known from his days as an actor in Hollywood. He repeatedly delayed a formal entry to the race amid staff shake-ups and questions about his work as a lobbyist and his slow fundraising pace.
 
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/fred_thompson/2007/09/12/31949.html

[gymforlord]

At first I was pretty excited about Thompson, but after listening to him a few times I'm pretty turned off-he is really cookie cutter (or seems that way to me.)

[Dos Equis]

I haven't looked at Thompson at all yet, so I don't any opinion on him.  Looks like the race is wide open.

Sep 14, 12:06 PM EDT
AP Poll: GOP presidential race a toss-up
By ALAN FRAM
Associated Press Writer
 
WASHINGTON (AP) -- White men, conservatives, evangelicals and other pivotal blocs are divided among the Republican Party's leading contenders for president, leaving the race for the 2008 GOP nomination highly fluid, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are each attracting significant support from core GOP groups, based on the poll conducted this week. Even Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign has been staggered by money problems and staff shake-ups, is backed by solid shares of suburban, college-educated and Midwestern Republican voters.

The roughly one-third of Republicans in the poll who said they disapprove of the job President Bush is doing were gravitating around all three of those hopefuls. Overall, the survey underscores that no contender has yet to convincingly make the case that he is the candidate for change that so many voters want as the party searches for its identity and a successor to Bush.

"I like Rudy's stand on the war on terror, and I also like his leadership qualities and I don't just mean 9/11," said August Olivier, 61, a conservative Giuliani backer and retired automobile executive from Rochester, Mich. But he said he also liked Thompson and might change his mind, adding: "I'm not against him. We've got time."

The poll showed the contest remains a virtual tie between Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at 24 percent and Thompson, the actor and former senator from Tennessee, at 19 percent. Not far behind at 15 percent is McCain while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has 7 percent.

The numbers showed virtually no change since the last AP-Ipsos survey in July.

Lisa Baudoin, 40, a student and homemaker in Sugar Land, Texas, said she is a conservative and supporting Thompson because of his views on abortion and immigration. She said she does not like Giuliani's more moderate immigration stance or his three marriages, and doesn't like McCain's opposition to the U.S. torturing terrorism suspects.

"How are you going to get information? They don't play nice. Why do we have to if no one else is," she said.

Further highlighting how up for grabs the GOP race is, fully 22 percent of Republicans did not back a candidate. And when the handful of GOP voters backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who has not said he is running, are distributed to their second choices, they divide about evenly among Giuliani, Thompson and McCain.

"People haven't coalesced around a particular candidate, or even one or two candidates, which is why this race is so wide open and why the winner will be determined by events that haven't happened yet," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster unaffiliated with any candidate.

In contrast, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has a clear, across-the-board lead in the Democratic race over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 34 percent to 20 percent, roughly the margin she has enjoyed for months. Lagging behind was former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina at 10 percent, while another 12 percent had no preference.

Clinton's lead stretched even more when Democrats supporting former Vice President Al Gore, who has not said he will run, are divided among their second choices. Then, she is ahead of Obama by 43 percent to 23 percent, with Edwards at 13 percent.

Besides being subject to change before Democrats and Republicans chose their tickets in 2008, this year's national polls have varied from some surveys in the important early voting states in the parties' nominating contests.

Several polls show Romney ahead in New Hampshire and Iowa and a jumbled GOP race in South Carolina. Meanwhile, Clinton leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but the three top Democrats have been more evenly matched in Iowa.

Among Republican voters in the national AP-Ipsos poll, Giuliani and Thompson each had about a quarter of those over 50, white males and married men. They also each had about one-fifth of conservatives, Southerners and evangelicals.

Giuliani and McCain each had about one-fifth of white GOP women. The top three candidates each had roughly equal shares of college-educated Republicans, Midwesterners, suburbanites, moderates and married women.

"He's gotten a good announcement, a good launch, a great reception on the campaign trail," John McLaughlin, Thompson's pollster, said of the former senator, who formally announced his candidacy last week.

Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella cited his leads in recent national polling and said, "Rudy's record of results, proven executive experience and grasp of the issues has real staying power."

The poll was conducted from Sept. 10-12 and involved telephone interviews with 1,000 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The survey included interviews with 482 Democrats, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. For the 358 Republicans surveyed, the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

---
 
 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PRESIDENTIAL_RACE_AP_POLL?SITE=HIHAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT