Fred Thompson seems to be getting a ‘dead cat bounce’ of sorts. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a dead cat bounce comes when somebody comes back in the polls a bit after hitting a low, and for no particular reason. Thompson is getting one of these; after hitting 10% in the RCP average, he is now back up to almost 12%, and with no good press to explain it.
The answer can probably be found in Mike Huckabee. After Rudy, Thompson took the Huckabee surge a few weeks back the worst. The single worst poll result he managed was 6%, within the margin of error of Ron Paul (who was at 5%). However, that was ARG, and ARG is about as reliable as a campaign’s own staff when coming up with predictions on who will win. However, there was another sub-10% result (actually two of them), so there’s a good chance he was at least down at 10%.
Huckabee has recently started cooling off in the polls. In what is now becoming something akin to a Three Stooges comedy, a Republican challenger rises, hits a ceiling, and falls back down. The next candidate does the same thing, and so on. At the same time, Romney and McCain have risen…and Rudy has continued, until RCP flushed some old polls from their rolling average and Rasmussen returned to reality, slumping.
Thompson is also showing signs of life in the Iowa polls…if not on the Iowa campaign trail. He’ll probably pull off a third-place finish there, some polls indicating McCain the favorite to do so (see my earlier discussion of those polls) notwithstanding. The same cannot be said for New Hampshire or Michigan, and to use a southern phrase, he’d be a damnfool to even go there. As much as he blew off New Hampshire’s debate, I actually wonder why he bothered putting his name on the ballot there. He’s doing almost as badly in Michigan; his support base seems to be limited to Iowa and the South (as well as perhaps some parts of the West; I haven’t seen much either way on that, as he temporarily led in Nevada but that seems to have been exclusive to his time as the main anti-Rudy candidate). His Iowa poll showing, however, is more a product of Rudy’s collapse than his own great efforts; Rudy’s average is currently in 5th place there, and he’s constantly flirting with Ron Paul’s polling position.
Ultimately, Thompson isn’t doing so well…though if his numbers pick up along with everyone else’s, we may well see five candidates over 15%. Right now, we’ve got 5 over 11%, and barring “news” (i.e. a Kerry-like upset in Iowa or a Dean-like scream), it’s set to stay that way for a while.
Tags: Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Polls, Republican Primary, Rudy Guliani
