This morning I saw a poll based on a number of wholly hypothetical Presidential election matchups, and I thought it was interesting. The problem is that I can't remember where I saw it. Not providing a link is really bad blogging form, I know, but you're just going to have to take my word on what's below.

Essentially, this poll pitted Rudy Guiliani against each of three likely Democratic nominees -- Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards. Hillary fared best, beating Rudy handily. Barack Obama also won out in the poll, though by a narrower margin. John Edwards lost to Giuliani, albeit barely.

Obviously these polls are pretty meaningless and the results are based largely on name recognition. My gut tells me that Giuliani should perform well in these polls, at least as well or better than the rest of the GOP frontrunners. I have a couple of reasons for that. First, I think there's a strong anti-Republican sentiment in the country -- call it the Bush black cloud. I think Giuliani is associated least with the Republican establishment (probably because he's the least Republican....) and, in turn, is least clouded. He also has lots of name recognition. Granted, it's not always the positive kind of recognition, but I do think people remember his performance on 9/11 much more than his divorces or police commissioner.

That he lost to Obama and Clinton is interesting to me, but not all that much. 2008 is clearly the Democrats' election to lose, but they managed in the past. That he beat Edwards is more interesting to me. Edwards ran a national campaign before, so while he might not enjoy the instant recognition of Hillary, he certainly can't claim the dark horse mantle. When he ran with Kerry, he was considered the charasmatic of the pair. But I think it's safe to say that's not his title to claim this time. And like the rest of the viable field, save Obama, he was initially in favor of Iraq.

So can somebody tell me what this guy has going for him?

Analogcabin @ 2:53 PM
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