Thread: Dramatic Changes Seen in Newest GOPUSA Presidential Survey

Dramatic Changes Seen in Newest GOPUSA Presidential Survey
Posted by Bobby Eberle
January 11, 2008 at 7:49 am

As the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination battle in debates and on the campaign trail, members of GOPUSA's Grassroots Survey Team have been asked throughout the past year to indicate their preferences on candidates and issues. The feedback has been amazing, and often indicates the direction being followed by other conservatives across the country.

In GOPUSA's latest survey conducted on Thursday, there was significant movement by some presidential hopefuls. It appears that conservatives are paying attention to what is going on in the debates and in the early elections, and their preferences have certainly changed since the last GOPUSA survey conducted two months ago. All candidates have been affected. Some have gone up, others have gone down. Here are the results:


First, a little background of the GOPUSA Grassroots Survey Team is in order. Unlike online polls which can get bombarded by spammers the survey team is a closed set of primarily conservatives who have provided GOPUSA with demographic data and who have agreed to share their opinions with GOPUSA on issues and current events. In essence, the GOPUSA grassroots survey team is similar to a national focus group, but instead of a group of thirty or forty, GOPUSA's group numbers in the thousands.

In the latest survey, conducted on Thursday and Friday (view full survey results here) over 2,400 members of the Grassroots Survey Team participated. In this report, their results will be presented and compared to the previous survey conducted in early November.

As with most of our surveys, we start with the Bush job approval question. In November, the Bush approval rating stood at 63%. Again, this is a survey of Republicans and conservatives, not the general public. In the current survey, President Bush's approval rose to 69%. This is far lower than previous approvals in the 80% range, but does make a steady rise for the president. This is undoubtedly due to the success of the troop surge in Iraq and the noticeable decrease in violence in the region.

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, in November, the big leaders were former Sen. Fred Thompson with 25% and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 23%. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was third with 14%, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 13%. Thompson's standing marked a significant fall for him from a high in the 40s, while Huckabee's was a significant rise from the previous survey.

In this week's survey, there was real movement by the candidates -- not necessarily in the direction they would hope for. The leader of this week's poll is still Thompson, up seven points to 32%, but the real mover in the positive direction is Mitt Romney in percentage and placement. Romney jumped from 13% to 20%, putting him in second place. Mike Huckabee dropped to third place and lost the most ground of any GOP candidate, dropping from 23% to 15%. My feeling on this is that during the previous survey, Huckabee was an unknown quantity on the rise. Many people liked what they heard before they even knew much about his record. As his record began to be scrutinized on issues such as immigration, taxes, and big government, conservatives started looking to someone else, and the biggest winner of that search is Romney.

The survey results then took a startling turn on the follow-up questions. GOPUSA asked respondents to indicate (regardless of their personal choice for president) whom they felt had the best chance of winning the nomination. In the previous survey, even though Giuliani was in third place in the preference question, he vaulted to first place on this one with a staggering 45%. What a difference two months makes. In this week's survey, more respondents thought Mitt Romney had the best chance to win the nomination (33%) -- an increase of 15 percentage points. Giuliani fell to second place with 17% -- a drop of 28 percentage points.

When respondents were asked in November to indicate which candidate they felt had the best chance to be the Republican nominee for president, the clear winner was again Rudy Giuliani with 44%. In this week's survey, the winner is Mitt Romney with 25%. Giuliani fell to second with 21%.

The rise of Mitt Romney is again due to conservatives slowly starting to coalesce around him. Huckabee's record is coming to light, and candidates like Giuliani and McCain (despite his win in New Hampshire) are simply unacceptable to conservatives. The fall of Giuliani is due in great part to the "out of sight, out of mind" perception. Giuliani has not contested the early races and has thus been out of the media spotlight. Perhaps his strategy of contesting Florida and the Super Tuesday (Feb. 5) states will pay off, but it has definitely set him back in the minds of the survey team.

These changes in the overall perception of the candidates are remarkably clear when we get to the issues. GOPUSA asked respondents to indicate which issue groupings were most important to them out of "Defense and Security Issues," "Taxes and Economic Issues," and "Social Issues." In November, the clear leader was Defense and Security with 64%, followed by Taxes and Economy with 14% and Social Issues at 12%. In this week's survey, the results are basically identical: Defense/Security - 65%, Taxes/Economy - 15%, Social - 11%. What did change significantly was the survey team's thoughts on which candidate could best handle those issues.

In November, Giuliani was the clear leader on Defense/Security issues with 29%. This week, he fell to second place behind Fred Thompson. Thompson finished with 26% to Giuliani's 21%. Up significantly was Sen. John McCain with 17%. Romney rose five points from November to 12%.

On the Taxes and Economic Issues, Thompson and Romney each rose from November, now placing first and second with 29% and 27%, respectively. On Social Issues, previous winner Mike Huckabee fell to second place behind Fred Thompson, 29% to 21%. Romney rose three points to take third place with 18%.

Border Security and Immigration remain the "most important issue" to the survey respondents with 44%. This is followed by the War on Terror with 24%. Moral Decline and Government Spending are the next two issues, 6% and 5%, respectively.

It is clear that the presidential race is still wide open. The shifts witnessed from the November survey to this one indicate that conservatives are paying attention. They watch what is going on and it affects their preferences. There are many contests remaining, and the race for the nomination is still up for grabs, but it is clear from this survey that the biggest winner was Mitt Romney.

http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=639

This sounds VERY interesting. When we get into conservative states, McSlimes "momentum" may take him back to Arizona to relax.