A new national poll now shows two clear front-runners in each political party: New York Senator Hillary Clinton is the front-runner for the Democrats and Arizona Senator John McCain — helped by a big “bump” from his New Hampshire primary victory — is the Republican front-runner:
The CNN/Opinion Research poll, conducted Wednesday and Thursday and released this afternoon, shows Clinton with a 49 percent to 36 percent lead over Barack Obama, with John Edwards at 12 percent. Clinton’s support rose from 40 percent in the same poll last month.
Among Democrats, the worsening economy has jumped ahead of healthcare and the Iraq war as an issue, according to the survey. Clinton leads among Obama in voters’ confidence in how they would deal with those concerns.
On the Republican side, McCain, with 34 percent, vaulted into the lead over Mike Huckabee, who has 21 percent support, Rudy Giuliani with 18 percent, Mitt Romney with 14 percent, Fred Thompson with 6 percent, and Ron Paul with 5 percent. McCain jumped from 13 percent last month, and nearly half of Republicans say they now believe McCain will be the eventual nominee.
Nationwide polls will become more important closer to Feb. 5, when 22 states vote in what is close to a national primary.
Polls are now viewed with enormous suspicion after their nearly total failure to accurately predict the outcome of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, and the national polls are not as relevant as polls where there are state primaries. But the poll does demonstrate Clinton’s political anchor — and McCain’s solid resurgence as a GOP favorite.
If McCain gets one or two more significant primary victories under his belt, look for him to be the clear front runner and for the GOP party establishment get behind him quickly to prepare for 2008.
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.