Running exclusively on a platform of “9/11 24/7″ appears not be working out so well for Rudolph Giuliani. Too bad (for him), it’s all he’s got.
“What happened is, it became a competitive race.”
- Giuliani
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds Mitt Romney with a slight lead in Florida’s Republican Presidential Primary. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are close behind in what may develop into a three-man race. It’s Romney at 25 percent, McCain at 20 percent, and Giuliani at 19 percent. Romney has picked up seven points over the past week while McCain and Giuliani each inched up a point … Mike Huckabee has slipped to 13 percent in the current poll.
But the worst news for Rudy may be waiting back home when New York state votes in its primaries on Feb. 5:
The WNBC/Marist Poll in New York shows McCain beating Giuliani 32 to 22 percent, followed by Mitt Romney at 14 percent and Mike Huckabee at 11 percent, with Fred Thompson trailing at 4 percent. Fifteen percent of 401 Republicans polled last week were undecided. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.
A second poll, by Siena College Research Institute, found the former New York mayor trailing the Arizona senator by 12 points for the New York primary Feb. 5. Siena put Giuliani second, with 24 percent of support among Republicans, behind McCain’s 36 percent. Romney had 10 percent, Huckabee 7 percent, and Thompson 6 percent. That poll has a margin of error of 7.4 percent.
About six weeks ago, Giuliani had a commanding, 33-point lead over the then-number two candidate, John McCain. Yesterday, he explained the new dynamics to New York Newsday:
“What happened is, it became a competitive race,” he said during a stop at Daytona International Speedway, where he rode his campaign bus around the banked NASCAR track. He said all the candidates who recently descended here were “in a very similar situation” and called the race “wide open.”
“It’s playing out the way we thought it would,” he said.
Yes, all according to plan.
[…] playing out the way we thought it would,” Giuliani said after polls showed that his one-time 33-point lead in his home state of New York is now a 12-point […]