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Leading candidate? Pick a day and pick a name
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Dig beneath the surface of the raucous Republican presidential race and you'll find even deeper turmoil: Four in 10 GOP voters have switched candidates in the past month, and nearly two-thirds say they may change their minds again.
Mike Huckabee, who has roared to a tie with longtime front-runner Rudy Giuliani, has little reason to feel safe, according to a national survey conducted for the Associated Press and Yahoo News.
Half of all voters know too little about Huckabee to even say whether they have a favorable impression of him. That could be ominous, because it gives his rivals the opportunity to define him.
This ground-level view of the 2008 race is made possible by an AP-Yahoo News survey that will periodically question the same 2,000 people until Election Day, repeatedly seeking their views about politics, the country and their own lives. That will produce a picture of how the campaign is playing out from the perspective of voters like Matthew Larson, 29, of Mankato, Minn., who since last month has moved from Giuliani to Huckabee.
"I switched due to inconsistencies in Giuliani's stands" on abortion, said Larson, a security counselor, referring to the former New York mayor's explanations of his abortion rights views that trouble many who no longer support him.
Highlighting how restless Republicans are, a fifth who said last month they wouldn't change candidates did so anyway -- along with half who said they might change.
No one in the GOP had a rougher ride in the past month than Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who joined the race in September and has slowly fizzled ever since. This month's poll showed he retained just over half of those who supported him in November, compared with six in 10 by Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain and three in four by Huckabee.
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