Mike Huckabee has surged to the number two spot in the latest AP-Ipsos poll.
Mike Huckabee has vaulted from nowhere into second place in the Republican presidential race, riding a burst of support from evangelicals, Southerners and conservatives, a poll showed Friday.
The upsurge by the former Arkansas governor has come largely at the expense of Fred Thompson, according to the national survey by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Thompson has dropped after failing to galvanize the party’s right-wing core as much as some had expected.
Rudy Giuliani remains the front-runner, yet while his support long has been steady it shows signs of fraying. Huckabee’s growing strength in the South has come as the former New York mayor’s support there has dropped, the poll found.
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The poll showed Giuliani at 26 percent among Republican and GOP-leaning voters, about where he has been since spring. Huckabee has 18 percent, 8 percentage points more than in an AP-Ipsos survey a month ago. That put Huckabee in a virtual tie for second with Arizona Sen. John McCain, who had 13 percent. Also close were Mitt Romney with 12 percent and Thompson with 11 percent.
Huckabee’s rise has been extraordinary. He’s moved from a second tier also-ran into a wide-open scrum for second place. And, no, this isn’t just one outlier poll. Here’s what RealClear Politics’ aggregation shows:
Here are the trend lines:
The Huckabee surge is real. Indeed, he’s the only candidate who’s been moving steadily upwards in recent months. (Even Ron Paul has flattened out after having finally appearing on the surveys.) How much of this is support for Huckabee and how much is movement away from Giuliani and Thompson, I can’t say. And, certainly, Jesus’ role in the process has not been revealed to me. But, clearly, something’s happening.
Photo source: Radar Online
