January 14, 2008
WASHINGTON — Republican voters have sharply altered their views of the party’s presidential candidates following the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, with Senator John McCain, once widely written off, now viewed more favorably than any of his major competitors, according to the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News Poll.
The findings underscored the extraordinary volatility in the Republican race and suggested that the party was continuing to search for a nominee whom it could rally around. Nearly three quarters of Republican primary voters said it was still too early for them to make up their minds “for sure,” meaning that they could shift their allegiances yet again if one or more of Mr. McCain’s rivals breaks through in the two Republican primaries this week, in Michigan and South Carolina.
The poll’s findings are based on a national telephone survey conducted Jan. 9-12 with 1,061 registered voters; it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The survey was begun one day after the primaries in New Hampshire, where Mr. McCain won, and amounted to a snapshot of a Republican contest that remains remarkably fluid after almost a year of campaigning. While national polls are of limited value in predicting the outcome of primaries in particular states, they capture broad shifts in opinion, in this case a sharp movement for Mr. McCain after a big victory and a wave of media attention.
Thirty-three percent of Republican
primary voters in the poll named Mr. McCain, of Arizona, as their choice, up
from 7 percent a month ago.
Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, whose favorability ratings jumped after he won in Iowa, was the choice of 18 percent of Republican primary voters. Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who is focusing his campaign on later contests, had the most precipitous fall; he was the choice of 10 percent of Republican voters, down from 22 percent last month. Support for other candidates was in single digits.
The poll also had worrisome signs for Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who finished second in both
Iowa and New Hampshire and is in a tough three-way battle in Michigan against
Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee. Not only did support for him among Republican
voters plummet over the past month, but he was also viewed much less favorably
than a month ago.
Mr. McCain, a longtime maverick in his own party, was named by Republican primary voters in the survey as the candidate most likely to win his party’s nomination. Thirty-nine percent of these primary voters saw Mr. McCain as the likely nominee. Only 11 percent saw Mr. Giuliani prevailing.
Mr. McCain’s image ratings also have soared. More than half of the Republican primary voters (57 percent) — including more half of the conservatives — viewed him favorably in the new poll, compared with 37 percent in December.
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