Former Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman, co-host of the Bloomberg Radio program “Simply Put” (WBBR Radio in New York, AM 1130; the rebroadcast can be heard locally from 8 to 10 p.m.), passes along two striking poll results from Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.
The first shows John McCain with a huge lead among New Hampshire Republicans some two and a half years before that state’s first-in-the-nation primary. No surprise there: New Hampshire gave McCain a huge win over George W. Bush in 2000, demonstrating that the Granite State’s libertarian-flavored GOP is seriously out of step with the national Republican Party. (Too bad.)
More striking, though, is the second poll, of likely voters in the 2008 Massachusetts Republican primary. At the moment, McCain has a lead of 46 percent to 22 percent over our home-state governor, Mitt Romney.
What does this mean? Not much this far in advance. But in Massachusetts, at least, Romney’s supporters can’t seriously argue that McCain has higher name recognition than their man does. It’s clear that Romney still hasn’t made enough of an impression on his adopted state to garner much support, even among his fellow Republicans.
Discover more from Media Nation
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dan, what’s also interesting is that Newt Gingrich of all people also beats Romney in New Hampshire — where the Governor vactions and pratically shares a media market. Do you think this is just a factor of name-recognition or is do you think that NH is suffering from the same Mitt fatigue that we are in Massachusetts?
I think McCain would win a poll against any Dem in Ma/NH. This is obviously his strongest region of the US,he’d sweep NE in a presidential election . Since party regulars don’t care much for a maverick, the senator still has problems if the GOP quickly mounts a stop McCain movement and a good alternative(not Mitt) surfaces.