December 10: Poll Update

2 national polls released today show Huckabee in a virtual tie for 1st place with longtime front-runner Giuliani. A CBS News/NY Times poll reports Giuliani 22, Huckabee 21, and a CNN poll has Huckabee at 22, just 2 points behind Giuliani. Newsday weighs in on Huckabee's soaring poll numbers:

Two new polls Monday showed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has fallen into a statistical tie with a surging Mike Huckabee.

The surveys suggest an end to Giuliani's yearlong domination of the Republican presidential polls.

Giuliani had kept a solid but shrinking hold on first place in recent polls but two new national surveys -- by CNN and The New York Times -- show Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, has pulled into a dead heat despite languishing far back in the race most of the year.

The latest CNN-Opinion Research poll shows Giuliani and Huckabee effectively tied for the top spot nationally, with 24 percent of Republican voters supporting Giuliani to 22 percent for Huckabee.

Just last month in the same survey, Giuliani had 28 percent and Huckabee 10 percent.

The CNN results were backed up by the Times/CBS News poll, which found 22 percent of voters picked Giuliani to 21 percent for Huckabee, with 16 percent for Mitt Romney.

In both surveys, the Giuliani-Huckabee matchup was well within the polls' margins of error -- meaning the results amount to a mathematical tie.

Meanwhile, a new South Carolina poll from from SurveyUSA has Huckabee in first place with 30% of the vote, 11 points ahead of second place Romney:

Huckabee 30
Romney 19
Thompson 18
Giuliani 13
McCain 10