Looks like John McCain pulled it out in the late reporting precincts. Jonathan Martin has a specific explanation for why Duncan Hunter performed well. There’s a clear gap here. I think that this tells us that Rudy Giuliani and McCain and the clear frontrunners. Mitt Romney’s 2nd-tier performance is quite Read more
The results here are wild: Candidate Votes Giuliani 158 Hunter 152 McCain 116 Brownback 83 Romney 80 Huckabee 21 Some thoughts on this. First, this is a coup for Rudy Giuliani. Hands down. Second, my sense is that the Duncan Hunter result isn’t so much for him as for "a Read more
Newt Gingrich just blasted out an email, reprinted here, and several things jumped out at me: First, Newt is wrapping himself in the banner of a conservative movement based on ideas by invoking both Reagan and Goldwater. He says, "This may be the most important CPAC since Ronald Reagan helped Read more
Patrick Ruffini pushed out the news that Rudy Giuliani won the February GOP bloggers straw poll. David All has one interpretation of what this means. I have another. It will be easier for Rudy to control stories about him, especially negative stories. First of all, this means that when the Read more
A couple of weeks ago, the Virginia Conservative Convention was supposed to pick George Allen as the conservative front-runner in their straw poll. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But something quite interesting did happen. They picked Newt Gingrich instead (results below), and Newt even doubled Mitt Romney, who, somewhat implausibly, has Read more
H/T Granite Grok. The Bow Picnic and Straw Poll in NH took place on the 19th. The results: US Senator John McCain (R-Arizona)26% US Secretary of State Condoleezza “Condi” Rice (R-Cal.) 26% Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) 14% Governor George Pataki (R-New York) 12% US Senator George Read more
GOP side: John McCain: 24% Rudy Giuiliani and Condi Rice: 20% Newt Gingrich: 10% Dem side: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards tied at 34% Vilsack third. Upshot: McCain is still the front runner. And Hillary just can’t go that high, we think.