With less than 90 days to go before the January 19, 2008 South Carolina Republican Party Primary, you can bet you’ll see more and more of the contenders visiting the Palmetto State!

This Saturday, November 3, Senator John McCain will be at Hot Dog Heaven on Broad River Road beginning at 8:45 a.m.

Next Wednesday, November 7, Governor Mitt Romney will be at Gatsbee’s in the Irmo Village beginning at 9:00 a.m.

Not often do two Presidential candidates visit Irmo within days of each other! If you haven’t decided on your candidate yet, I’d encourage you to get out to these events next week and get to know more about both these gentleman and their vision for our country.

If you hear of other candidates having events in our community, please let me know and I’ll keep everyone posted!

Ninety days is an eternity in politics but below is a cut/paste of this week’s American Research Group Polling in the three early voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

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October 30, 2007

Three new American Research Group polling of 600 Republican likely caucus/primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina (conducted 10/26 through 10/29) find:

Iowa

27% Romney
19% Huckabee
16% Giuliani
14% McCain
8% Thompson

New Hampshire

30% Romney
23% Giuliani
17% McCain
7% Huckabee
5% Thompson

South Carolina

29% Romney
23% Giuliani
13% McCain
10% Thompson
5% Huckabee

All other candidates receive less than five percent each.

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UPDATED – Friday Morning, The State

Here’s another poll that was headlined in today’s State Newspaper this morning.

“Thompson has the support of 17.9 percent of likely Republican voters, a Winthrop/ETV poll released Thursday shows. Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani both are at 16.5 percent.

However, the three leading candidates really are in a statistical dead heat, given the poll’s 4.29 percent margin of error. And with nearly 30 percent of Republicans still undecided, according to the poll, the race to win the Jan. 19 primary is wide open.

Of the four main early voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina — South Carolina is the only state where Romney is not leading in most polls.”