The gap narrows further

Good news for Huckabee and Thompson but bad news for Romney and McCain.

 

Putting the latest Iowa polling data through Samplemiser produces the following figures: Romney 27.77 Huckabee 23.5 Thompson 14.45 Giuliani 13.01 McCain 6.15 Paul 5.86. This is good news for the former Arkansas governor, who sees the gap with Romney dwindling from 19.34 points as late as October 22nd to 4.27. The data also show Thompson overtaking Giuliani and pulling away from McCain. McCain’s campaign has now publicly abandoned Iowa, pledging to make only a ‘nominal’ effort. The problem with McCain’s strategy, apart from making a third place finish by Giuliani a possibility, is that he could very well be overtaken by Ron Paul, which would be a damaging blow to his credibility. It goes without saying that McCain needs to ‘throw the pigskin’ and start attacking Bush, and the Republican field, on economic issues, even if that loses him some of his conservative support. The only good news for the Arizona senator is that it looks like Michigan will be running a primary rather than a convention (though even this is a balanced by the fact that the gap between Iowa and New Hampshire will only be five days).