What Happened to the McCain Campaign?

What Happened to the McCain Campaign?

Arizona Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record) (R) began the Election 2008 season as the presumed frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Now, he is struggling to stay ahead of Mitt Romney for third place in the hearts and minds of Republican Primary voters. The trends aren't encouraging for the war hero who challenged then-Governor Bush for the nomination eight years ago.

Polling completed last night (June 14) shows that just 48% of American voters have a favorable opinion of McCain. That's down from a peak of 59% in December and 55% just two months ago. Forty-five percent (45%) have an unfavorable opinion.

The most recent polling on the Republican Presidential nomination contest shows McCain at 11% (tied with Romney). That's just half the 22% level support he enjoyed in January and less than half the current support for both former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Senator Fred Thompson.

While losing ground, perceptions of McCain's ideology has shifted significantly. More voters are likely to see McCain as politically conservative today than they did when the campaign began. In December, just 26% viewed McCain as a conservative, a figure that grew to 45% in May.

Normally, being seen as more conservative would help a candidate in the Republican primary campaign, but it didn't work for the man from Arizona.
What happened?

In retrospect, it appears that McCain was never really the dominant frontrunner that many had assumed. The early polls showing Giuliani ahead were dismissed as meaningless because "everybody knew" that Giuliani couldn't win the Republican nomination. America's Mayor has shown a lot more staying power than expected. Looking back, it now appears that McCain and Giuliani were holding their own preliminary competition for the right to face off against a more conservative challenger for the nomination. Giuliani won that round and the most likely scenario now is for GOP voters to end up with a choice between Giuliani and either Romney or Thompson.

But, McCain's problems are deeper than just being an over-rated frontrunner when the season began. Substantively, the playing field shifted in ways that made it far more difficult for McCain.
One of the challenges faced by every Republican hopeful in 2008 is to show that they would be different from

President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush while also remaining a loyal Republican. McCain, at one level, had seemed a natural for that role. His jostling with the President was a constant feature of the early Bush years. In fact, the bigger challenge for McCain among Primary voters was proving he was a team player.
Now, however, McCain is in lockstep with the President on the two biggest issues of the day… the War in
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq and immigration.

Those are precisely the two issues where every candidate would want to have as much separation from the President as possible. Most Americans say the President is doing a poor job handling the situation in Iraq and a candidate seen as extending the Bush approach in Iraq will not win Election 2008.

The Senate immigration bill backed by the President is opposed by a broad cross-section of the American public. McCain's vocal and visible support for that bill has cost him dearly over the past month… both among Republican Primary voters and the general public.

In the end, this places the Arizona Senator in a box that Harry Houdini would have trouble escaping. His positions on immigration and Iraq put him at odds with the American public on two hot button issues. He is identified with an unpopular President on those issues at a time when voters are looking for a new direction. At the same time, many conservatives continue to have doubts about McCain and his loyalty to their team.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.