Re: The Indelicate Question

Would a McCain withdrawal favor Rudy Giuliani? Gallup's Frank Newport crunches
the numbers on recent national Gallup polls on the Republican presidential
nomination and confirms the findings from the Cook/RT Strategies polls that I blogged
earlier this week:

To answer this question, we aggregated the last
three Gallup
polls in which the Republican trial heat was included - conducted June 1-3,
June 11-14, and July 6-8. Across those three polls McCain's percent of the
vote averaged 18%. In each poll, we ask voters to name their second
choice. So for this analysis, we removed McCain's votes, and reallocated
his voters' choices to their second choice candidates.

The results? Rudy Giuliani picks up the most
of McCain's votes, going from a 30% share of Republican choices with McCain on
the ballot to 38% with McCain removed.

Fred Thompson moves from 16% to 18%. Mitt
Romney goes from 9% to 11%. Newt Gingrich gains a point, from 7% to 8%.
Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson and Mike Huckabee all gain a point, but remain at
3% or less of the vote.