Washington – Republican Rudolph Giuliani leads Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in two of three key presidential swing states, a new poll showed Wednesday.
The former New York mayor led the field in Florida and Pennsylvania, while Clinton was ahead in Ohio, according to the Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll.
“Because of Electoral College math, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are critical in presidential elections,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “No candidate since 1964 has taken the White House without taking at least two of these swing states.”
While Giuliani is showing early strength, Brown cautioned, “it’s early in the race and our swing states remain very much in play.”
In hypothetical general-election matchups in the three states:
Giuliani leads among independent voters in all three states.
Clinton and Giuliani are ahead in their party primaries in all three states.
Although Obama loses “the trial heats” to Clinton and Giuliani, “he has much more room to grow his candidacy” than Clinton does, said Brown. “Her negative ratings among independents and Republicans are high enough to be worrisome, and that means her strategy must be to emulate Bush’s in 2004 – turn out the party faithful.”
The telephone poll took place Feb. 25 through Sunday. The margins of sampling error were plus or minus 2.9 percentage points in Florida and Pennsylvania and 2.7 points in Ohio.
