GOP Straw Polls Results For March

29 Mar, 2007 by John Hawkins

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At Right Wing News, the following candidates had a positive net acceptability score in the “GOP Straw Polls” March 2008 Poll,

Fred Thompson +65.4%
Duncan Hunter +48.1%
Newt Gingrich +42.4%
Tom Tancredo +22.6%
Mitt Romney +20.8%
Rudy Giuliani +18.7%

The following candidates had a positive net acceptability score in the overall results:

Fred Thompson +58.5%
Newt Gingrich +35%
Mitt Romney +26%
Rudy Giuliani + 22.9%
Duncan Hunter +15.5%
Tom Tancredo +1.8%

As a point of comparison, here are the candidates with a positive net acceptability score from last month:

Newt Gingrich +42.9%
Mitt Romney +37.9%
Rudy Giuliani +32.7%
Duncan Hunter +8.1%
Tom Tancredo +0.3%

Short and sweet analysis: This is Fred Thompson’s first time in the poll and he is obviously generating a lot of excitement. It looks as if there are a lot of people who are ready to crown him as the “great conservative hope” for 2008. Is it possible that Thompson could get in and then see some of his support erode as skeletons we haven’t learned about yet come out of the closet? Sure, but these early results suggest he would be a top tier contender with enormous grassroots support right out of the blocks if he decided to run.

Another interesting thing about Thompson is that he peels off a lot of support from all the other top tier contenders, which would seem to indicate that there have been a lot of people holding their nose and supporting “A-List” candidates that they really don’t like very much.

It’s also interesting to note that there is one second tier contender who’s now getting within striking distance of the big boys (cough cough, Duncan Hunter, cough cough). In February, Hunter was 29.8 points behind Romney and 24.6 points behind Rudy. One month later, he’s only 10.5 points behind Romney and 7.4 points behind Giuliani. It could be coming along faster, but Hunter is definitely moving on up (he was at -11.6% in December).

I am a consultant for the Duncan Hunter campaign through TCV Media.

PS: I know I said I was going to try to stay away from talking about the Republican candidates unless there was big news, but at least from the stand-point of the blogosphere, I think this kind of showing from Thompson and to a lesser extent Hunter, qualifies as significant news.