As the Republican presidential candidates played “Quien es mas Reagan?” Thursday night, Rudy Giuliani staked his claim to the Gipper legacy by claiming — among many, many other things — that he could run a “50-state campaign” just like Reagan did.
“If we want to be a party that can run and win in states that Ronald Reagan won — New York, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, states we haven’t won in a long, long time, and states in which we don’t even campaign any longer — we’re going to have to take a really good look at what made up the Reagan coalition,” Giuliani said. “It was a broad outreach, an inclusive one, not one that kept people away.”
Which is all well and good, except for this: In a new SurveyUSA poll, Giuliani has fallen into a statistical tie with John McCain in New York. Giuliani polls at 32 percent, McCain polls at 29 percent, and the margin of error is nearly 5 percent.
Ah, yes, you may be saying, but Giuliani was talking about the general election, not the Republican primary. Yes, he was. And a Rasmussen Reports poll of hypothetical general election matchups taken in November had Giuliani losing to Hillary Clinton in New York by 9 percentage points.
