New Poll Suggests Rudy Big Winner From McCain Exit
The latest from Diageo/The Hotline shows Rudy with a mere 1-point lead over Fred Thompson (and only a 3-point lead over the perhaps-too-quickly-written-off John McCain). It’s very interesting, though, to look at what happens when McCain is left out of the Republican side:
Republicans
Giuliani 20 (-6)
F. Thompson 19 (+10)
McCain 17 (nc)
Romney 8 (nc)
Brownback 4 (+2)Republicans (No McCain)
Giuliani 36
F. Thompson 21
Romney 11
T. Thompson 6
Brownback 5
Almost all of McCain’s support goes to Rudy, and that augers well for the Giuliani campaign as we continue to get reports that suggest McCain’s campaign is floundering, despite being basically statistically tied with Giuliani and Thompson in this poll…
I’m shocked. None of the regular crowd telling us that Republicans will “NEVEREVEREVER” nominate Giuliani? Of course, Democrats will never admit it, and they will say the opposite, but, as they lay awake in bed at night dreaming of impeachment, those dreams are haunted by the prospect of Giuliani as the Republican nominee.
The Democrats is Congress with members Hullary and Obama included, make senseless political theatre doing fealty kowtows to the Crazies pulling them leftwards. This gains them nothing, alienates the real world Democrats ,and scares the Independents.
Their worst fear is if the Republican nominate a tough centrist-rightist that speaksk like a Blue Stater and tugs at their base.
A few troops withdrawn by Mr. Bush next summer, amid Victory statements, and Presto and a 49-50 state sweep faces them in their nightmares.
The second poll contains 15 more points than the first. It looks more like when McCain is out of the picture more people are willing to make choices, or something like that. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Giuliani gets all of McCain’s support, because Thompson picks up two, Romney picks up three, Thompson picks up at least two and Brownback picks up one. That adds up to half of McCain’s support right there. All I’m saying is that there’s some points unaccounted for there.
Looking at the internals of the poll, 30% of respondants, including 26% of Republican respondants (am I misspelling that?) haven’t even heard of Fred Thompson. So it’s not unlikely to think that if one removes McCain from the poll, his support would shift to the man with the higher name recognition.
At any rate, look at question 8b: Opinion of Harry Reid. Check out the answer “Haven’t heard of.” Fully 46% of Democrat respondants have not heard of their own Majority Leader.
As Fargus was saying, the second poll is different from the first. The question sans-McCain was asked first, and there were 8% unsure. Then McCain was added to the mix, and the number rose to 18%. Why more people were unsure when another candidate was added, I’m not sure. Also, it seems like those questions should have been switched.
At any rate, this poll could use some deconstruction with respect to the methodology by someone who knows how to do that kinda stuff. Either people were deliberately giving disingenous answers to the poll, or something’s rotten in Denmark, because the numbers just don’t make sense to me.
Here’s the link: http://www.diageohotlinepoll.com/07_Jul_Data.pdf
It’s on Page 9 of 21, the Republican preference polls are Questions 16a and 16b.
I think it is a mistake to take F. Thompson’s showing in these polls seriously until he is actually… umm … in the race.
GCB, looking at the results in that link, it seems to me that there’s ample reason to think that they’re less than meaningless. For instance, look at the results from Democrats. If John McCain isn’t in the race, 48% say they would vote for Rudy. If John McCain is in the race, only 13% vote for Rudy. But it’s even weirder than that. If McCain isn’t in the race, then 100% of Democrats choose one of the candidates. If McCain is in the race, then 69% of Democrats choose “all of the above,” “none of the above,” “Other” or “unsure.” Makes no sense at all.
There’s a similar discrepancy of 34-35 points among independents in the two questions. I’m taking this poll with less than a grain of salt, personally.
That was the column that was mainly interesting me, Fargus. Not to mention that T. Thompson and Brownback are taking a decent chunk of the vote in this poll and Mike Huckabee is getting none at all. That’s practically the exact opposite of every other poll.
We agree on something, mark it down…
I have researched the data in the Diageo/The Hotline poll, and have come to the conclusion that the data in this poll is likely accurate in showing that McCain’s steep fall in his poll numbers, has assisted in Giuliani’s poll numbers going up. I would add though, that there is also data that shows the exact opposite holds true. In a poll by Mason Dixon, and a second by Rasmussen, it shows Rudy Giuliani still ahead of Fred Thompson in both of these polls as well, though by a considerable lesser degree.
For example, in the Mason Dixon Poll, Giuliani leads Thompson by a mere 3%. In this poll the numbers have Giuliani with 21% of the vote and Thompson with 18% of the vote, with 34%undecided.
In the Rasmussen poll, it shows Giuliani with 22% of the vote and Thompson with 21% of the voters support. In this poll 21% are not sure or are undecided.
The data for both the Mason Dixon and Rasmussen polls were state polls, specificially Florida polls. The Diageo/The Hotline poll was a General National Poll.
I interpret all this information this way, in the Diageo/The Hotline poll, I believe the data that shows Strong Strength for Rudy Giuliani from McCain’s loss, is coming from voters in the Northern States, though “I CAN NOT PROVE THIS” because the poll unfortunately did not release how this data was collected.
The specifics of the Mason Dixon poll are in PDF format. You may need to download the software before being able to sift though all the data of this poll. Here is the link.
http://www.floridatoday.com/assets/pdf/A980539727.PDF
Here is the link to the Rasmussen Poll data.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/florida_giuliani_22_thompson_21
The link to the Diageo/The Hotline is below.
http://www.diageohotlinepoll.com/07_Jul_Data.pdf
I wanted to add in the Diageo/The Hotline poll, if you look at the detailed polling information on very last page, on page 21, you will see that all it says under the part of the poll that describes where the votes come from known as the “Region” part of the poll, that the percentages shown are “Only Measuring” percentages of total people sampled in those regions, rather than the total share of specific Republican or Democrat Candidates share of the vote in these specific regions of our nation.
I am a data hawk though, so maybe most of you won’t care, but I am not at at all satisfied by the sloppy way in which this poll was put together.
Correction, in the Rasmussen poll I stated that 21% of the voters are either unsure or are undecided. That is false. The portion of the poll measuring undecided voters is actually 27%. Sorry for the error.
Correction, I stated in the Rasmussen poll that in my comment on this blog shown as number 8, that the undecided portion of this poll was 21%. That is not correct. The portion of the people polled that are either unsure or are undecided is 27%. Sorry for the typing error.