There’s a new campaign challenger in the Republican 2008 Presidential nomination sweepstakes — a new candidate who’s taking a new poll by storm.
So far he/she has no negatives.
Or positives.
Or anything.
Except that this candidate isn’t one of the ones running — or likely to be on the ballot.
After months of an exhaustive pre-primary campaign, an AP Poll says, Republicans are increasingly preferring a candidate/noncandidate named “none of the above”:
The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals. Such dissatisfaction underscores the volatility of the 2008 GOP nomination fight.
In sharp contrast, the Democratic race remains static, with Hillary Rodham Clinton holding a sizable lead over Barack Obama. The New York senator, who is white, also outpaces her Illinois counterpart, who is black, among black and Hispanic Democrats, according to a combined sample of two months of polls.
A half year before voting begins, the survey shows the White House race is far more wide open on the Republican side than on the Democratic. The uneven enthusiasm about the fields also is reflected in fundraising in which Democrats outraised Republicans $80 million to $50 million from April through June, continuing a trend from the year’s first three months
.
In other words, in sheer terms of candidate resources the GOP had better find an exciting candidate soon that can raise the Big Bucks.
None of the Above may excite Republican voters, but that candidate will likely rake in None Of The Dough Needed To Win against a big Democratic bankroll. MORE:
“Democrats are reasonably comfortable with the range of choices. The Democratic attitude is that three or four of these guys would be fine,” said David Redlawsk, a University of Iowa political scientist. “The Republicans don’t have that; particularly among the conservatives there’s a real split. They just don’t see candidates who reflect their interests and who they also view as viable.”
More Republicans have become apathetic about their top options over the past month.
A hefty 23 percent can’t or won’t say which candidate they would back, a jump from the 14 percent who took a pass in June.
Giuliani’s popularity continued to decline steadily as he faced a spate of headline headaches, came under increased scrutiny and saw the potential entry of Thompson in the mix; his support is at 21 percent compared with 27 percent in June and 35 percent in March.
And Thompson? The Law & Order actor didn’t hold his July 4th announcement as planned and now talk is that he’ll wait until September to do it.
Part of the reason is that while Thompson doesn’t announce, he falls into the “none of the above” category in realistic terms. Once he announces, he IS one of the above and the empty slate upon which many conservatives are defining him will be partially erased as his political foes and Democrats draw their own verbal pictures of him.
But the dynamics of a race can change rapidly. One of the present candidates can pull out of the pack. Thompson could have foot-in-mouth disease once he gets in and lose support. And perhaps someone who isn’t yet in the race will jump in — but there is no person being mentioned…yet.
The bottom line is: it doesn’t seem as if any GOP candidates have come close to closing the deal with voters.
Except None of the Above.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.