According to the most recent election poll conducted by Dartmouth and WMUR, Sen. Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan are tied in the race for the GOP presidential nomination in the New Hampshire primary, while support for hopeful Steve Forbes has dropped by half.
If the GOP primary had been held between Feb. 13 and Feb. 15, when the polling was conducted, 22 percent of the 343 likely Republican primary voters surveyed said they would vote for Dole, a 3 percent decrease from the previous poll conducted in early February.
An equal percentage said they would vote for Buchanan, making for a 10 percent increase in Buchanan supporters.
After placing a disappointing fourth in Wednesday's Iowa GOP caucus, former poll front-runner Steve Forbes saw his support in New Hampshire evaporate from 29 to 14 percent.
Director of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences Linda Fowler, who directs the joint polling project, said Forbes' fall is due to increased advertising by other candidates.
Support for Alexander rose six percentage points, to 16 percent. Of the remaining candidates, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, received four percent of the vote, Allen Keyes received two percent, Morry Taylor received one percent, and Bob Dornan received zero percent.
Each candidate's favorability rating increased since the previous poll, with the exception of Forbes, whose rating decreased by 15 percent.
Most notably, Buchanan's favorability rating increased by nine percent and Alexander's rating increased by 12 percent, despite poll results showing that 44 percent of likely Republican voters are undecided or have not heard enough from Alexander.
Fowler said Alexander is the GOP candidate with "the most room to grow," although she noted that he does have a limited time in which to draw attention to his campaign.
Although Buchanan's favorability rating jumped to 39 percent, poll results show that 42 percent of likely Republican voters have an unfavorable opinion of him.
"I don't see a lot of movement for him upward," Fowler said, but she also noted that a strong Buchanan effort is "influencing the kind of things that get talked about" during the campaign.
When asked for whom they would vote between President Bill Clinton and Dole if the presidential election were to be held on the days of polling, 51 percent of the 523 likely New Hampshire voters chose Clinton and 37 percent chose Dole, as compared to 34 percent in the previous poll.
