GOPers skip a debate, and trail in various polls!

Fox News has just come out with a new national poll, and it contains great news for Democrats. Not only is Bush's approval rating back down at 34%, but Clinton has built a healthy lead against her Republican rivals:

• Against Giuliani, she wins 46% to 39%. If Bloomberg is added to the race (why are they bothering polling this anymore?) Clinton's lead goes up to 10: 42% to 32%, with 7% for Bloomberg.
• Against Thompson, Clinton leads by 13% (48-35) and 7% against McCain (46-39)
• Barack Obama does more poorly: He only beats Giuliani by a point (41-40), McCain by two (42-40). He does beat Thompson by 12, however (40-38)

While Clinton is supposed to be more polarizing, notice that she also gets much high percentages of the vote than Obama: She also has more people willing to vote for her no matter what. Also in the poll are some interesting numbers: The Democratic Party has a 50/40 favorable rating, while the Republican Party has only 44/47. Now, look at the numbers for the NYT (47/22) and MoveOn.org (11/22). A full 56% have never heard of MoveOn, and not many voters are ready to condemn the NYT after two years of accusations of unpatriotic journalism. In fact, with the GOP's approval rating lower than the Times's, are Republican accusations perhaps not improving the NYT's reputation?

• Oregon leans slightly Democratic
  

The SurveyUSA poll onslaught continues (seriously, how awesome is it?) with a survey from Oregon. Democrats lead 8 out of 9 contests, while Obama-Giuliani is tied. As always, Democrats fare much worse against Giuliani than the other major Republicans:

• Clinton leads Giuliani by a small 46-44 margin, while she leads against Thompson 49-41 and against Romney 51-38.
• Obama and Giuliani are tied at 46, while Obama has a 5 point edge against Thompson (48-43) and 18 against Romney (53-35)
• Edwards beats Romney 47-44, Thompson 51-36, and Romney 52-34.
  

Oregon is not the most important of swing states, but it could be indicative of how things go in the country. Both Gore and Kerry won the state by small margins. If things are better in 2008 for Democrats, it could mean less worrying about states like Oregon and Minnesota. In MN, SUSA showed a very strong Democratic edge yesterday (see yesterday's poll). Things are a bit less rosy in Oregon, but the state is still light blue.

And one quick question: Isn't Edwards electability argument (he does run the strongest in this poll after all) undercut by his decision to opt for public financing?

SUSA polls from the past two weeks: Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, Wisconsin.

• The Republicans debate on PBS

The Republican candidates were invited to debate minority issues on PBS, and only the six "minor" candidates (including Alan Keyes) showed up. McCain, Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson all cited scheduling conflicts; as a result, they spent most of the past week being criticized by many representatives of the African-American community and many Republican figures. Mike Huckabee said he was "ashamed," and analysts pondered how much the GOP stood to lose. Not that Republicans have that much support to begin with among black voters, but the party has been attempting some sort of outreach effort. The GOP candidates also skipped Univision's Hispanic debate last month, an even more problematic move given that Latinos are a key swing constituency.