The latest CBS News poll puts Paul at 8% in New Hampshire (still just 4% in Iowa), which confirms the result from at least three other polls that I can recall from the last week or two that show him at 7%. This puts him within eight points of both McCain and Giuliani. If this is right (and I should note that this poll’s sampling error for N.H. Republicans was 6 points!), second place is an entirely realistic goal at this point, provided that he continues to climb in the polls as he has finally started to do. If Paul outperforms either of them (especially McCain with guaranteeing a win), the story is unfortunately not going to be, “Why is Ron Paul doing so well?” but instead will be, “Why is X so pathetically weak?”
Also, Huckabee seems to be moving up in Iowa, now at 21%. If Huckabee managed somehow to win Iowa (and two-thirds of Romney’s supporters are not yet fully committed to backing Romney), that could badly damage Romney and shake things up, but it would probably to the ultimate advantage of Giuliani. At the start of the month, Ross explained the perverse (that’s my term, not his) relationship between Huckabee’s surge and Giuliani’s success. I still don’t think a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket would work at all, nor is it likely to happen, but they do seem to have ended up as very strange natural political allies.
Full results of poll are here.
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November 14th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
M.Z. Forrest
If Huckabee wins Iowa, I think Paul gets hurt in New Hampshire. I don’t foresee two second tier risers. The other possible scenario with a Huckabee win is that he is overcome with negative advertising that he is toast in future states. Being cash poor, this could happen. Paul’s best shot at the nomination, one that I believe is better than Thompson’s, is to place strong in New Hampshire. I don’t think show will be high enough. He has to win or place.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Daniel Larison
The profiles of Huckabee and Paul voters are entirely different. Religious people are not enthusiastic about Paul at all, but independents and, bizarrely, self-described “moderates” are, while Huckabee does very well among the former and not especially well with the latter. Huckabee will be siphoning off votes from someone else. They’re both “second-tier” because the national media have claimed that they are. The caucuses and primaries in January determine who is actually an also-ran. Certainly, I would say that media attention would go heavily to Huckabee if he did win, so it is probably in Paul’s best interests for generating media coverage that Huckabee come in second. That can then be advertised as a “Huckabee stagnating, Paul surging” outcome. In any case, the more I think about it the more it seems to me that a Huckabee win probably won’t happen. The caucuses are heavily dependent on good organisation, and Huckabee has been weak in organisation since the beginning (because he is weak in funding, which has changed a little but not a lot and not enough). Even Brownback’s operation was superior to his. It is a tribute to Huckabee’s natural charisma, I suppose, that he beat Brownback at Ames anyway, but it doesn’t help his chances at the caucuses.