John McCain is reportedly dismissing recent polling data which shows that his polling in South Carolina to be in single digits.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday dismissed polls that show him slipping into single digits, arguing that his campaign is going through the typical ups and downs and will be fine this fall.
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A recent state poll showed McCain at just 7 percent in the race with top rivals Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson close to announcing. A survey in Iowa also showed McCain in single digits.
“That poll is just not true,” McCain said in the interview, referring to the South Carolina poll. With “veterans alone, we are doing much better than that.”
Obviously, McCain is right to not give too much credence to polls at this point in time. There’s still a lot of campaigning left to go.
Additionally, although I probably wouldn’t vote for a McCain ticket, I think that he’s still pretty much the favorite to win the Republican nomination. At the very least, I agree with my colleague James in the post below that he’s not down for the count yet.
The GOP has a rather long tradition of putting up candidates when “they’re due for it” (see Dole, Bob), regardless of merit. Plus, Giuliani’s campaign has a really strong chance of imploding due to the many, many skeletons in his closet. Romney doesn’t have the charisma or the trust of the base, and Fred Thompson’s campaign is pretty much just a passing fad. (Once word starts to get out that he’s spent most of the past 20 years as a Washington lobbyist, he’s going to be hard pressed to run as a “Washington outsider.”)
As far as I can tell, the Republican field both now and in the foreseeable future doesn’t actually have anyone with the ability to knock off McCain over the long haul of the remaining primary campaign.
