Michael Barone

The latest Gallup/USAToday poll shows Rudy Giuliani with a big lead in the race for the Republican nomination. Giuliani gets 40 percent to 24 percent for John McCain, 9 for Newt Gingrich, 5 for Mitt Romney, and 3 for Sam Brownback. Others get 2 percent or less. Caution: There were only 425 Republican respondents, so the margin of error is greater than in most polls you see. But it looks like a clear upsurge for Giuliani. The last three Gallup polls showed between 28 and 31 percent for him and between 26 and 28 percent for McCain: Ties. Now Giuliani is ahead by nearly 2 to 1. And I don't think you can attribute these results to McCain's strong support of George W. Bush's surge. Gallup asked Republicans whether Bush's troop surge and McCain's strong support of the war made them more or less likely to support McCain. Only 8 percent said those things made them much less likely to support McCain, while 21 percent said it made them much more likely to support him.

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