GOP Race Wide Open
by Scott Rasmussen
Issue 95 -November 7, 2007

In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, the more you look at the numbers, the more you realize how wide open the race really is.

During this past week, many pundits noted how well Mike Huckabee did in the Rasmussen Reports poll of the Iowa caucus. Far fewer commented on the fact that six-out-of-ten Likely Caucus Participants say they might change their mind between now and January 3. Think about that for a moment. How can anybody really be ahead or behind if 60% of the participants are willing to change their mind.

Other polling from last week shows that, on a national basis, John McCain is still struggling to stay in double digits among Likely Republican Primary Voters. His negative ratings among the GOP base remain far too high for someone hoping to capture the party’s endorsement. But, in general election polling, McCain is in a dead heat with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In those match-ups, he’s doing better than any of the other GOP hopefuls.

Where does that leave the race? First, it leaves Republicans less optimistic than Democrats about their chances of winning the White House. Less than a quarter of Republican voters think any of their team’s candidates are Very Likely to win it all in November 2008. Among Democrats, 50% believe Hillary Clinton is Very Likely to win.

Second, it shows that the months of campaigning have done little to sort out the prospects of leading candidates. At this point, it’s fairly easy to note that Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, and Duncan Hunter are not going to capture the nomination.

It’s also fairly easy to suggest that Mike Huckabee and John McCain are very, very long shots. It is hard to see them getting the nomination without major mistakes from all the other campaigns. But, given the volatility of the race, it’s not quite possible to rule them out.

Among the top three candidates—Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney—it remains much easier to show why each of them should lose the nomination rather than win it. But, barring a major surprise, one of those three will be the Republican nominee in 2008.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade. Rasmussen Reports’ Election 2006 coverage has been praised for its accuracy and reliability. Michael Barone, Senior Writer for U.S. News & World Report and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, mentions, “One clear lesson from the Republican victory of 2004 and the Democratic victory of 2006 is that the best place to look for polls that are spot on is RasmussenReports.com."