Britain and America

Do celebrity endorsements make a difference?

Over the weekend Oprah Winfrey openly endorsed and campaigned for Barack Obama.  Before then Mike Huckabee's surging campaign received help from Chuck Norris.  Do endorsements make a difference?  The video above attempts to answer that question.

Whatever the answer to that question, Huckabee is surging in the Republican race - he is now only 4.2% behind Rudy Giuliani in RealClearPolitics' national tracking of the crowded GOP field.  His support has more or less doubled in just a month.  Governor Huckabee is now well ahead in Iowa.  He also leads in South Carolina.  And is picking up reasonable support in the Giuliani stronghold of Florida.

The 'Oprah effect' on the Democrat race is yet to be properly tested but Hillary's national lead remains formidable.  Her difficulties are in the early states - notably Iowa, where Senator Obama has moved into a narrow lead.

Overview of polling for the Republican race

This CNN video summarises the polling for the GOP race. Romney continues to lead in the first primary elections - Iowa and New Hampshire - but Giuliani leads nationwide... but not by much.

Half of Americans would never vote for Clinton

A new poll by Zogby shows Hillary Clinton topping the league of candidates that Americans would not consider supporting.

50% of nearly 10,000 voters said they would never vote for the New York Senator.  Only 37% said the same of Barack Obama, her principal rival.  There has been something of an 'inevitability' about Mrs Clinton winning the Democrat nomination recently but this poll underlines the danger of her candidacy for her party.  It will be ammunition for Obama as he starts to take the gloves off in a bid to erode her huge advantage of 25.8% in the RCP average of polls.

The leading GOP candidates - Giuliani (43%), McCain (45%) and Romney (42%) are all quite close to each other in terms of the 'I'll never vote for him'.  Huckabee - profiled earlier today on BritainAndAmerica - has the best 'untouchable rating' of the Republican hopefuls; 35%.

Giuliani continues to lead although Thompson and McCain gaining support

John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics has a good post on the state of the race for the GOP nomination.

In last week's Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan dedicated her column  to the overall state of the Republican race.  This is what she said of McCain:

"John McCain seems liberated by loss. Once he was the front-runner, then he was over. Unburdened by the pressure to do well, he has rediscovered the pleasures of the trail. The other day when a student was impertinent, he pleasantly responded, "Thanks for the question, you little jerk." It reminded me of the time Mayor Rudy Giuliani told an insistent radio caller who pressed for the legalization of ferrets that he probably cared about the issue because he was insane.  In the debate, Mr. McCain was spirited--we stay and fight in Iraq, "otherwise we face catastrophe and genocide in the region." Fox News's focus group said he won. As he retools, he should speak of Reagan in 1976, when he was washed up in South Carolina and said, "I'm taking this all the way to the convention, and I'm going even if I lose every damn primary between now and then."

Clinton - overwhelmingly likely to be the Democratic nominee - leads Guiliani by an average of 2.5% in the polls.

Bloomberg candidacy may hurt GOP most

A new Newsweek poll on the 2008 contest suggests that Mike Bloomberg might hurt the GOP candidate more than the Democrat.  If 'Mayor Mike' runs the Clinton lead over Giuliani in a two horse race of 7% (51%-44%) becomes a 9% lead (46%-37%-11%).  Clinton and Giuliani both lead their fields in the Newsweek survey.

Latest poll bad news for Republicans

Andrew Burkinshaw writes:

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Rudy Giuliani is losing support, Hillary Clinton is gaining support and that the majority of Americans want the Democrats to win the presidency in 2008.

The poll shows that Giuliani still leads the Republican field with 29% but that former Senator (and undeclared candidate) Fred Thompson is now in second place with 20% and that former favourite John McCain has fallen level with Mitt Romney on 14%.

But will it be worth winning the Republican nomination? The poll shows that by 52% to 31% Americans would prefer the next President to be a Democrat. The poll gives the Republican Party its worst result for twenty years showing that by 49% to 36% Americans think the Democrats more closely share their values and positions.

President Bush's own popularity rating has fallen to its lowest level at 29%, with 66% of Americans disapproving of his performance. Among Republicans his approval rating has dropped to 62%.

For Democrats the picture is mixed. The Democrat controlled Congress's approval is lower than the President's at 23%. Only 41% of Americans say that their representative deserves to be re-elected, similar to the levels before the Republicans lost control in November.

But Democrat presidential candidates are doing better. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democrat, beats Giuliani 48% to 43% in a hypothetical run-off. Hillary Clinton is strengthening her position within the Democrat field, up from 36% to 39% while both Barrack Obama and John Edwards have fallen, Obama from 31% to 25% and Edwards from 20% to 15%. It appears Hillary's efforts to contrast her experience with that of Obama's is working.

Who needs policies when you are so likeable? Obama fever continues to grow...

Good news for Senator Barack Obama in an overnight poll for the Wall Street Journal.  He is now only 5% behind Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton (trailing her 36% to 31%) after being 12% behind last month.  John '$400 haircut' Edwards is third on 20%.

Earlier this month we also learnt that the Illinois Senator had raised almost as much money as the former First Lady.  Hillary Clinton's campaign raised $26m to Obama's $25m.  Fundraising power had expected to be the New York Senator's trump asset.

Senator Obama is also winning the IT race according to TechPresident.com.  He has more than three times as many MySpace friends as Clinton, for example, and is many times further ahead on YouTube views. 

All Democrat candidates are far ahead of their Republican rivals in use of the internet according to TechPresident.  MySpace and other social networks are expected to be important ways of recruiting new activists in the 2008 campaign.

The WSJ/NBC survey found that Rudy Giuliani is still the GOP frontrunner but his support is down 5% over the last month to 33%.  His support for publicly-funded abortions may have hurt the former New York Mayor with Republicans.  Senator McCain, who relaunched his campaign yesterday, remains in second place on 22%.

There is a lot of pressure on Barack Obama to come forward with detailed policies but Clive Crook, writing in today's Financial Times, thinks that vagueness might be one of his key strengths:

"He is winning support from very different constituencies. Much of the Democratic base adores him. That is how he came to beat Mrs Clinton in primary-election fundraising last quarter (astonishing everybody, not least the Clinton campaign). He excites the base because, aside from being black, he is a liberal’s liberal. His voting record in the Senate places him close to Edward Kennedy, way to the left of the repositioned Mrs Clinton. It helps that, unlike her, he was against the Iraq war from the start.  Outside the Democratic party, on the other hand, he appeals because, apart from being black, he seems moderate, likeable and unthreatening. Race aside, the base likes him for his Howard Dean qualities; Middle America likes him because he is no Howard Dean, or so they imagine. The best way to undermine this alliance would be to offer a detailed manifesto. Better to stay in the realm of anaesthetic generalities."

"Better to stay in the realm of anaesthetic generalities"?  That may be a good electoral strategy but it's very high risk for governing.

Giuliani remains ahead of Clinton and McCain

The latest polling shows that the lead that Giuliani began to build over his Republican rivals at the start of the year is being maintained.  The former Mayor of New York has a 32.8% to 19.2% lead over Senator John McCain, his nearest rival and the long-time favourite, according to RealClearPolitics' must-bookmark tracker graph.

Senator Clinton enjoys a similar polling advantage over Senator Obama (34.3% to 22.8%) in the race for the Democrat nomination.

Given the unpopularity of President Bush (his average approval rating is just 34.4%) it is noteable that the leading Republican candidate (Giuliani) is an average 5% ahead of the leading Democrat (Clinton) in very early head-to-head surveys.