A new poll shows former actor Fred Thompson is losing support in his (low-key) drive for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination as Senator Hillary Clinton is gaining support in her (high-key) drive for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination:
Fred Thompson got into the Republican race with great expectations. And sure enough, just after he got in last month, polling showed Thompson and Rudy Giuliani were just about tied for front-runner.
But since then, Thompson’s taken a lot of flak for a lackluster campaign from party activists in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Support for his campaign has also wavered. The new CNN poll by the Opinion Research Corporation released Tuesday shows Thompson’s support dropping — now at 19 percent, down from 27 percent in September.
That’s not a fatal drop — but it’s not the kind of good news that will get activists fired up, generate positive press coverage, or encourage a huge infusion of campaign funds.
He’s now running second, slightly ahead of Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who has 17 percent. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, still leads with 27 percent.
Significance: McCain is still in the running…but more and more it looks like he’s in the running as an “also ran.”
Of the remaining Republican presidential candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received support from13 percent of the Republicans polled, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee received 5 percent, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California received 3 percent, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas received 2 percent, Sen. Brownback of Kansas received 1 percent and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado received 1 percent.
Bad news for Romney. With him injecting campaign funds into his campaign that perhaps surpass the GNP of some third world countries, you’d think he could be doing better than that.
And the Demmies?
On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York continues to gain support and build on her lead. She led Sen. Barack Obama by 23 points last month — 46 percent to 23 percent. She now leads the Illinois senator by 30 points — 51 percent to 21 percent.
That’s a consistent upward trend.
Of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards received support from 15 percent of the Democrats polled, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson received 4 percent, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware received 1 percent, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut received 1 percent, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel received 1 percent and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio received 1 percent. On this question former Vice President Al Gore was not included as a candidate.
It is extremely early in the campaign, but the common, non-political person on the street has to look at these numbers and wonder why Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich are still in it unless it’s for the debate — or just in case some new plague suddenly wipes out all the front runners who are getting more than one percent poll ratings.
SIGNIFICANCE: If Thompson’s poll numbers keep going down you’ll see a spate of (premature) political obituaries for him. He still is in the race as the anti-Giuliani, anti-Romney and anti-McCain. But it appears as if GOP voters don’t view him as a Ronald Reagan, either.
And Hillary Clinton? She continues her ascent, but, if she stubs her toe badly and her poll numbers go down, look for the press to quickly start writing about her decline. The Politician On The Rise is a huge story — but so is The Politician On The Decline.
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.