Building the Base

When a party’s presidential nominee becomes known, Gallup stops asking the party faithful which candidate they favor. Relative to past presumptive nominees, how much support does John McCain have? In Gallup’s final poll about the nomination contest, 51 percent of Republicans supported McCain. This is slightly less than the 57 percent who supported George W. Bush at a similar point in 2000. At that time, McCain was second with 34 percent, which is slightly higher than Mike Huckabee’s level of support today. Source: The Gallup Organization.