Why Giuliani trumps everybody, why McCain trumps Clinton

Giuliani

What is it that makes Rudy Giuliani unquestionably the leading candidate of The Israel Factor?

Why do our panelists keep giving him the highest marks, 8.75 this month - his highest mark since the first survey? Why would they choose him over any candidate we pit against him? He scored 3 against Clinton's 2.5 and 4.12 to Edwards' 3.

And, most impressively, why is it that when we ask the panelists to choose the three "best" candidates and the three "worst" candidates from an Israeli perspective, there is only one candidate on which they all agree: Giuliani. The former New York mayor got eight votes out of eight for one of the best, and no votes for one of the worst. The panel is in complete agreement on this.

There are many other candidates that the panel would say are generally "good for Israel." But none of them enjoys the same widespread approbation.

Newt Gingrich, for example - not yet a declared candidate - has ranked very highly from the start, second only to Giuliani. But is he one of the best three Republican candidates? Only four panelists thought so.

Or take Hillary Clinton, the leading Democrat of this survey: Six panelists identified her as one of the top three Democratic candidates - but there's also a panelist who ranked her as one of the three least favorable. Two panelists ranked Al Gore as one of the least favorable, and one named McCain. All of the above are generally high-scoring candidates, but not one of them is Giuliani. And, after this month's results, I suspect that this is how the panel will keep voting until he wins or quits the race.

Full first analysis of the 6th Israel Factor here.

Clinton

We have some data on other candidates in the sixth survey, among them a comparison between Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards. Clinton is more popular with the panel, but there are some signs that her popularity was down somewhat this month. Last month, in a head to head race, more panelists preferred her as a candidate over McCain ? but this month it's different. When we rated Clinton as a 3, five out of the eight panelists gave McCain a 4 or a 5, and only one gave him less than 3.

Why would the panel change his mind? Two reasons:

1. Panelists who voted last month and didn't feel right when the results came out "corrected" their vote.

2. I asked the panelists for an explanation and what I got is this: the competition between Democratic candidates like Obama and Edwards over the Iraq War before Democratic activists (who are more liberal than the rest of the U.S.) has forced Clinton to move away from the center and more to the left. The left of the Democratic Party has many elements that aren't as friendly toward Israel.

Obama

"Obama will soon make the case that he'll be as strong on Israel as anyone," I wrote last week, but the panel voted earlier in the week and didn't yet have the chance to weigh this information during their considerations. So much so, that Obama went back to the old position of ranking last, supplanting Hagel.

Rice

The list of candidates on our Factor is shrinking. John Kerry dropped out voluntarily, but we also decided to drop Condi Rice as there were no signs whatsoever that she might run. Last month we wrote about Rice, the race and Israel. You can read it here. In short: the panel didn't give her high marks.

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