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Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
GOP Race Unsettled in Politically Diverse Early States
Republican voter sentiment in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina is highly fluid. Compared with Democratic voters, likely Republican voters in these three politically disparate states express less enthusiasm about their field of presidential candidates, and many Republicans voice only modest support for their choices.
Mike Huckabee runs even with Mitt Romney in Iowa, but the former Massachusetts governor holds a wide lead over all of his rivals in neighboring New Hampshire. There is no frontrunner in South Carolina, where Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson have about as much support as Romney, closely followed by John McCain and Huckabee.
Republican preferences in the early states are quite different from GOP opinions nationally. While Giuliani continues to draw the most support among likely Republican voters nationwide, he runs a distant third to Romney and Huckabee in Iowa, substantially behind Romney in New Hampshire, and is among three candidates vying for the lead in the wide open race in South Carolina.
The race for the Republican nomination is complicated by the different political terrain in each of these three primary states. Huckabee's strong showing in Iowa is largely based on his support from white evangelical Protestants. The former Arkansas governor leads Romney by about two-to-one (40%-21%) -- and Giuliani by an even greater margin -- among white evangelical Protestants in Iowa.
But white evangelical Protestants constitute a much smaller share of the likely Republican electorate in New Hampshire than in Iowa (18% vs. 38% in Iowa). Although Huckabee runs much better among white evangelical Protestants than among non-evangelicals in New Hampshire (24% vs. 3%), his overall level of support there remains modest.
The likely Republican electorate in the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary also includes the highest proportion of independents and the lowest share of self-described conservatives of the three early primary states. While Romney holds a substantial lead among Republicans (40% to 21% for Giuliani), his advantage among independents is narrower: Romney draws 32% among likely independent voters in New Hampshire, compared with 20% for Ron Paul, 18% for McCain, and 15% for Giuliani.
In South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary Jan. 19, white evangelical Protestants constitute more than half of likely Republican voters (53%). Huckabee runs better among evangelicals than non-evangelicals in South Carolina. But at this point voters in South Carolina are less engaged in the election than are voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Christian conservatives there may be less aware of the former Arkansas governor who has made a late surge in Iowa.
There are substantial policy disagreements, as well as demographic and religious differences, among the likely Republican electorates in these states. In New Hampshire, just 55% of likely Republican voters approve of President Bush's job performance, compared with 72% of those in South Carolina and 80% of Iowa GOP voters. Fewer Republican voters in New Hampshire oppose gay marriage and a much greater proportion says abortion should be mostly legal than either in Iowa or South Carolina.
By contrast, Iowa Republicans take more conservative positions on environmental and tax policy than do Republican voters in the other early states. Fully half (50%) of likely Republican voters in Iowa's caucuses believe that "stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy;" only about a third of Republican voters in New Hampshire (34%), and 37% of GOP voters in South Carolina agree that tougher environmental laws excessively burden the economy. Iowa Republican voters also are more somewhat supportive of retaining all of President Bush's tax cuts than are Republican voters elsewhere.
The primary state survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, in collaboration with the Associated Press, was conducted Nov. 7-25 among 264 voters likely to vote in the Jan. 3 Iowa Republican caucuses; 446 likely voters in New Hampshire's Jan. 8 Republican primary; and 468 likely voters in South Carolina's Jan. 19 Republican primary. In addition, a separate national survey was conducted among 448 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say they are likely to vote in a primary or caucus in their state.
The survey finds that Republican voters are less enthused about the quality of their party's presidential candidates than are Democratic voters in the early primary states. In Iowa, where voters have had much greater exposure to the candidates than in the other early states, 73% of Republican voters rate the GOP field as good or excellent. By comparison, 87% of likely Democratic voters in Iowa rate their party's candidates positively, and twice as many Iowa Democrats as Republicans rate the field as excellent (36% vs. 18%).
In addition, fewer Republican than Democratic voters strongly support their candidates. In Iowa, 57% of GOP voters strongly support their candidate, as do 49% in New Hampshire and just 44% in South Carolina. The relatively low level of strong support for candidates among Republican voters also underscores the fluidity of voter opinion in these states.
While two issues are dominant among Democratic voters in the trio of early primary states -- the war in Iraq and health care -- there is less agreement among Republican voters about the importance of major issues. It is clear, however, that immigration and terrorism rate as much greater concerns among Republican voters than among Democrats.
In Iowa, about as many likely Republican caucus-goers cite immigration as the issue they would most like the candidates to discuss as cite the war in Iraq (18% vs. 15%, respectively); nearly as many say terrorism (13%) and the economy (12%). The agenda differs slightly in the other two states, with the war mentioned most frequently. But immigration rates near the top of GOP voters' issues agenda in New Hampshire and South Carolina, as well as nationally. By contrast, the Iraq war, health care and the economy far overshadow immigration among the concerns of Democratic voters.
At this point, no Republican candidate stands out as being best able to handle immigration. Romney holds a sizable advantage on immigration in New Hampshire (37% vs. 16% Giuliani), but a much narrower edge in Iowa, and no candidate stands out among South Carolina Republican voters as best able to deal with immigration.
In fact, none of the Republican candidates holds a consistent advantage on any issue across all three early primary states. In Iowa, Huckabee is most often mentioned as the candidate who can do the best job of "reflecting your views on social issues like abortion and gay rights;" 27% cite Huckabee in Iowa, which is about twice the percentage naming any other candidate. But in New Hampshire, 28% say Romney can do the best job on social issues, while just 9% name Huckabee.
Nationally, Giuliani is viewed as the candidate with the best chance of winning the general election (46% vs. 15% for McCain). He also is viewed as the most electable candidate by likely GOP voters in Iowa and South Carolina. However, this is not the case in New Hampshire, where about as many likely Republican voters say Romney has the best chance of winning as choose Giuliani (39% Romney vs. 35% Giuliani). In any event, far more Republican voters, both nationally and in the early states, say it is more important to choose a candidate who agrees with them on the issues rather than one who has the best chance of winning in November 2008.
There is no evidence that Giuliani is being hurt by his pro-choice stance on abortion in the early primary states. In all three early states, Giuliani runs about as well among those who are aware that he is pro-choice as he does among those who do not know this. Among Iowa Republican voters, 14% of those who know he is pro-choice, and 13% who do not, support Giuliani.