"Giuliani Republicans" Less Conservative Than the Typical Republican

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Rudy Giuliani has led all Gallup Polls of Republicans' preferences for the party's 2008 presidential nomination since February. He has the highest favorable ratings of the Republican presidential candidates, and has raised more money for his campaign in the second quarter of this year than any other Republican. Despite this, some experts believe he is far from a cinch to win his party's nomination, in large part because his views on abortion and other social issues are not in step with traditional Republican positions.

Gallup aggregated data from its last three Republican nomination preference ballots to see how the political beliefs of Giuliani's supporters compare with those of Republicans who support other candidates. An analysis of these data finds that Giuliani voters are less likely than other Republicans to identify themselves as conservatives in general and with regard to social issues in particular. There are only minor differences in the two groups' self-described ideology on economic issues. Pro-life Republicans are not eschewing Giuliani completely; in fact, the slight majority of his supporters say they are pro-life rather than pro-choice. However, a much larger proportion of Republicans who support other candidates are pro-life.

Ideology of Republicans

The Republican Party largely consists of Americans who are politically conservative. In the three polls combined for this analysis, 68% of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents described their political views as either "very conservative" or "conservative."

But the subset of Republicans who rate Giuliani as their top choice for the party's 2008 presidential nomination are somewhat less likely than other Republicans to describe themselves in this way. According to the data, 59% of Giuliani Republicans say they are very conservative or conservative, compared with 73% of Republicans who favor other candidates for the nomination. Giuliani voters, in turn, are more likely to identify themselves as moderates (34% vs. 22%).

Notably, those who do not support Giuliani are more than twice as likely as Giuliani supporters to say their views are "very conservative" (16% versus 7%).

To gain additional insight into respondents' ideological orientation, Gallup asked Americans about their ideology on social and economic issues. Overall, Republicans are likely to describe themselves as conservative in both issue areas, and by roughly the same percentages (66% say they are conservative on economic issues and 63% on social issues).

Giuliani supporters diverge more from the rest of the party on social issue ideology. Fifty-five percent of Giuliani Republicans say they are conservative on these matters, compared with 66% of all other Republicans. Again, Giuliani supporters are more likely to describe themselves as moderates, and less likely to say they are very conservative.

There are, however, only slight differences on economic issues -- 61% of Giuliani Republicans and 67% of the remainder of Republicans identify themselves as economic conservatives. This result makes sense given that Giuliani's positions on economic issues are generally in line with those of other Republican candidates, and any differences he has on economic policy with the others have not been highlighted to the extent that his disagreements with them on social issues have.

Republicans and Abortion

Abortion is a critical issue separating the Republican and Democratic parties. In fact, it has not been uncommon for candidates who held a view in opposition to the majority of their party's rank-and-file to switch that position prior to entering the presidential nomination race. The most notable example of that in the current election cycle is Mitt Romney's conversion from the pro-choice stand he espoused while running for the U.S. Senate and for governor in Massachusetts to a pro-life position in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Giuliani, however, has been consistent in his pro-choice views throughout the campaign, and it may be the single issue that most distinguishes him from his main competitors for the nomination. It also distinguishes Giuliani's supporters from his non-supporters to a significant degree. While Giuliani Republicans are still more likely to identify themselves as pro-life (51%) than pro-choice (44%), the gap is fairly narrow. Among all other Republicans, the gap in favor of the pro-life position is better than 2-to-1, 65% to 29%.

Bottom Line

The full impact of Giuliani's issue positions on Republicans' preferences is still an unknown. A January USA Today/Gallup poll found that the vast majority of Republicans were unsure where Giuliani stood on several social issues -- 64% did not know his position on abortion and 75% did not know his position on gay civil unions. Additionally, about as many Republicans incorrectly said he was pro-life as correctly identified him as pro-choice on abortion.

Republicans may be more aware of his positions now, especially because his stand on abortion has been a frequent topic in the several Republican candidate debates. The data reviewed in this analysis show that Giuliani's supporters, thus, are somewhat less conservative in their views than the typical Republican, and also more likely to be pro-choice (although from a broad perspective, Giuliani voters are still on the same side of the political spectrum as the remainder of the party, just not to the same degree).

These data suggest the possibility that GOP voters are more knowledgeable about Giuliani's policy stands today. The relationship between the potentially heightened awareness and likelihood to support Giuliani is unclear at this point, although it is worth noting that his support for the nomination has dropped to 28% in the most recent poll, the lowest it has been since December.

Survey Methods

These results are based on combined data from telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,262 Republicans and independents who lean to the Republican Party, aged 18 and older, conducted in May and June 2007. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3 percentage points.

For results based on the sample of 359 Republicans who support Rudy Giuliani for the 2008 presidential nomination, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points.

For results based on the sample of 903 Republicans who do not support Rudy Giuliani for the 2008 presidential nomination, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.