Now that we're coming down to the last few precious weeks before voting begins in the primaries to choose candidates in the race to decide who should lead the country and the Free World, former Sen. Fred Thompson is ramping up his campaign schedule. Seven other hard-working Republican campaigners are close on his tail.
One recent morning, according to the schedule from Thompson's press office, he began his campaign day bright and early at 8:15 a.m. with a telephone interview with Andy Peterson on WMT in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He followed that 25 minutes later with an interview on WFLA Tampa Bay, Fla., and then at 10:40 with an interview on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa.
By 11 a.m., he was done.
And that was it for another campaign day.
When 1% is 50%
Rep. Duncan Hunter, the San Diego area's very own presidential candidate, may take heart, we suppose, that he's moving in the right direction -- a new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll finds that among likely Republican voters nationwide, support for his little-noticed campaign has gone from 2% in October to 3% now, a possible 50% increase in support.
Of course, taking into account the plus-or-minus sampling error of 5 percentage points, he could just be treading water in a shallow pond.
And even if there's the slightest of positive trends for Hunter, the survey seems to show that his political handicaps include a pronounced gender gap: Among those who identify themselves as members of the Republican Party, 6% of males said they supported Hunter; 0% of females did.
Dodd stuck in neutral
Recent polls can show conflicting data, but they've achieved unanimity on one front: Christopher J. Dodd probably doesn't have to worry about the continuing demands of a presidential campaign much longer.
Dodd, as we've noted, has gone to great (some might say extreme) lengths to make headway in Iowa by moving his family there and enrolling a daughter in kindergarten, giving Iowa three senators and Connecticut just one. Dodd hopes to stage a surprise in the Jan. 3 caucuses. But if he's made progress, it's not discernible yet.
Two recent surveys found him holding steady at 1% support among likely caucus-goers. The third -- offering a more precise figure, perhaps because a university conducted it -- put him at 0.6%.
Running ahead of him were Dennis J. Kucinich (1.1%) and "refused to say" (1.6%).
The Ron Paul Conspiracy
