Poll: Huckabee’s Support Reportedly “Surging” In Iowa
December 8th, 2007
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
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We’ve seen it every election year: the talking heads (which these days includes us bloggers) make all kinds of supposedly-learned predictions and then something funny happens. The voters make all these oh-so-smugly-certain predictions seem silly (so those who make them then move on and pretend they never made them at all).
Is a big upset of the 2008 Presidential nomination sweepstakes now brewing?
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has vaulted over his major GOP challengers to take a commanding lead in the race to win the Iowa caucuses, while Barack Obama continues to edge ahead of Hillary Clinton among Democrats likely to participate, a new NEWSWEEK poll shows.
The most dramatic result to come out of the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,408 registered Iowa voters on Dec. 5 and 6, is Huckabee’s emergence from the shadows of the GOP race into the front runner’s spot in just two months. The ordained Southern Baptist minister now leads Romney by a two-to-one margin, 39 percent to 17 percent, among likely GOP caucus-goers. In the last NEWSWEEK survey, conducted Sept. 26-27, Huckabee polled a mere 6 percent to Romney’s 25 percent, which then led the field.
This is MAJOR news. Because as news spreads that it looks like Huckabee’s candidacy is on fire (and that other candidates could be fired) his “free media” coverage increases and more voters get to sample his political wares. Media stories lead to more media stories. And there tends to be a bandwagon effect as some pundits begin to adopt the line that, by golly, he may actually get the nomination. The Newsweek poll has to be good news for Huckabee’s camp:
Huckabee has also opened up a wide margin over the next three leading candidates, who all show signs of fading in Iowa: Rudy Giuliani, who dropped from 15 percent in the last survey to 9 percent in the current one; Fred Thompson, who fell from 16 percent to 10 percent; and John McCain, who slipped from 7 percent to 6 percent. “You rarely see anything like [Huckabee’s surge],” says Larry Hugick, who directed the polling for Princeton Survey Research Associates. Hugick added that the reason has as much to do with a leeriness of the other candidates among Republican voters as Huckabee’s folksy success on the stump. “He’s filling a vacuum,” Hugick said. “Nobody on the Republican side was getting strong support.”
Newsweek notes that YES Romney is indeed being hurt by his Mormon religion — just as Huckabee is being helped by his:
The survey was completed on the day of the former Massachusetts governor’s much-heralded speech in College Station, Texas, addressing his religion, though most respondents probably had not heard it. Still, only a small number of the 540 Republican voters surveyed in Iowa (10 percent) said they wanted to hear more from Romney about that issue, and close to half (46 percent) said at least some Iowa Republican voters will not consider supporting Romney because of his Mormon faith. More than a quarter (27 percent) said they don’t consider Mormons to be Christians, and one in six (16 percent) said they are less likely to support Romney because he is a Mormon.
Huckabee’s religious credibility, by the same token, appears to be a key factor behind his surge. Huckabee has opened up a huge lead among evangelicals, who are likely to make up about 40 percent of GOP caucus-goers on Jan. 3, the survey found. Among all Republican voters who identify themselves as evangelicals, 47 percent support Huckabee while only 14 percent back Romney. Among nonevangelicals, the two candidates are dead even at 24 percent apiece. Even so, a majority of Republican voters indicated that other issues, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, health care and Iraq, are more important than religion.
It is a bit of an irony: Huckabee performs well on the stump, but the reality is that he is getting a chunk of his support from people who would not vote for Romney if Ronald Reagan himself rose from the grave and personally bestowed his blessing on him and if Rush Limbaugh embraced Romney and kissed him on Hannity and Colmes.
So there are several factors here: Huckabee’s skill as a campaigner (he has charisma) and good, old-fashioned bigoted feelings towards Mormons. JFK clearly had better luck with 1960s voters than Romney has had with 2000-era voters.
But, then, in these days of polarization where many people only want to hear and read views they already agree with, making inroads to change hearts and minds isn’t as easy as it used to be.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 1:15 am and is filed under Atheists, Mike Huckabee, Mormons, Mitt Romney, Republicans, 2008 Elections, Religion, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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