November 21: Huckabee News Roundup

Rasmussen's latest national poll has Huckabee tied for 2nd place nationally:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows a three-way tie for second behind national frontrunner Rudy Giuliani in the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination. Giuliani attracts 24% support from Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide while Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee are each preferred by 13% of Likely Primary Voters. John McCain is close behind at 11%, Ron Paul's is at 6% and no other Republican candidate reaches 2%.

The latest Zogby/Reuters national poll shows Huckabee in 3rd place, ahead of Romney and McCain.

Giuliani 29
Thompson 15
Huckabee 11
Romney 9
McCain 9
Paul 5

A growing number of Republicans, 21 percent, said they have not made up their mind, leaving room for more changes in the field. The shifting numbers, after months of a relatively static race, could indicate voters around the country are beginning to pay attention to the 2008 race, Zogby said.

"There is a real fluidity to both races," he said.

And Huckabee has also surged into third place in South Carolina. According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Huckabee is up 9 points from September, with 12% of the vote:

Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are tied for the lead in South Carolina's Republican Presidential Primary.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds both men earning 21% of the vote from Likely Primary Voters. That’s a big change from September when Thompson was on top with support from 24% and Romney trailed the frontrunner by nine percentage points.

Trailing the two leaders are Rudy Giuliani at 13%, Mike Huckabee at 12%, John McCain at 9%, and Ron Paul at 8%.

ABC News has a good article covering the Huckabee surge in Iowa:

Propelled by little more than his message and political skills, Republican presidential contender former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has vaulted into a statistical dead heat for first place in crucial, first-in-the-nation caucus state Iowa, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Huckabee's surge is equal parts size and intensity, having gained considerable ground among key parts of the GOP base in the Hawkeye state — evangelicals, conservatives, weekly churchgoers and abortion opponents — with 50 percent of his supporters "very enthusiastic" about him, compared with 28 percent of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's supporters.

The affable underdog achieved all this on a shoestring budget with little national infrastructure and close to no support from the Republican establishment.

"The people of Iowa are pretty savvy when it comes to politics," Huckabee told ABC News in an interview. "They are folks who, you know, they auction their cattle, but not their presidential candidates. And so just because somebody's gone in there and spent a bunch of money doesn't necessarily mean the people of Iowa say, 'He's my guy.'"

Huckabee, who placed second in the Iowa Straw Poll in August, suggested that for the last "11 months, everybody's been writing my political obituary each month, saying, 'He can't go on, he can't go on, he doesn't have enough money.' And here I am, tied. I mean, that's not supposed to happen. But it's happening because Americans are electing a president, not somebody who's going to head the fundraising for the United Way."