Redstate

That is the big question, as they represent the margin of victory between McCain, Romney, and Guilinai.

Of course, we don't even know if those three will still be in the race by the time Michigan votes. (It's possible I guess, if Iowa, N.H. and S. Carolina all pick different candidates).

Anyway, the point is that no one can claim to be winning Michigan with less than 1/3 of the voters, and almost a year before the election.

The Michigan primary has not been decided yet. However, the rumor is that GOP higher-ups want it before Feb. 5. They are quite serious about positioning the primary as by itself after Iowa, NH, and SC but before the tidal wave.

If that happens, then I believe it could be the last chance to salvage a win for a candidate.

http://michiganformccain.blogspot.com/

The top three are all in the running. It also shows the power of McCain's name recognition. As for his amount of support, it reflects that as well as the fact that, well, I don't think anybody would confuse Michigan for being a very conservative state.

However, things of note that I take from the poll:

1) Details of the poll tend to favor Guiliani, including winning H2H against McCain, having the top percentage of combined 1st/2nd choice votes, and having the best raw favorability/unfavorability ratio. However, he could be very affected by increased name recognition of the other candidates as the campaign goes on.

2) McCain has a phenomenal favorability ratio on the "very" categories, meaning he has a strong (rabid?) base of support. This gives him a potential advantage in terms of supporters and "locked-in" votes for a primary, but it means that he could also be positioned uniquely well for his challengers to gang up on him to take him down a peg. The debates will be critical for him, to see if he can rise above this.

3) Romney is looking, not surprisingly, quite solid, including a gaudy "very favorable" rating. Has a rather low name recognition compared to Newt, Rudy, or McCain, so we'll see how this pans out in the next year.

4) As far as the others go, Michigan GOP'ers really seem not to like Newt (not sure why exactly, but that's an unfavorable rating almost double Bush's amongst people polled), the Little Three (Brownback, Huckabee, and Hunter) are all struggling, Hagel seems to be the Don Quixote of this campaign, and maybe EPIC should add Thompson's name to the next poll that they run. With 2% of people just volunteering his name to a closed-ended question, that might be enough to make some sort of a shake-up if his name was added as a choice, which would probably do the most harm to McCain and Giuliani's numbers.

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