Thompson Surging In Iowa

Romney, who has campaigned more often in Iowa than his Republican rivals, is the presidential choice of 29 percent of those who say they definitely or probably will attend the leadoff caucuses. Support for the former Massachusetts governor is essentially unchanged from an Iowa Poll taken in May, when he was the top choice of 30 percent.

There’s been a shakeup, however, in the rest of the field.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who officially entered the race for the Republican nomination a month ago, grabs second place in the new poll at 18 percent. The poll was conducted while he was finishing his second campaign trip to Iowa last week.

For months, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has owned this state. A next-door neighbor with a vacation home here, Romney has had a double-digit lead over his fellow Republicans in the nation's first primary state, a hallmark of his highly disciplined campaign for the presidency.

Now, that lead has all but evaporated. The latest polls show him running neck-and-neck with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has beefed up his campaign staff and flooded the state with direct mail to make up for his infrequent visits.

And a revived Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the darling of New Hampshire in 2000, in nipping at both of their heels. Romney's drop, which has come despite him spending millions of dollars on television commercials here and years building a ground operation, has turned the Granite State into a tossup three months before the voting takes place.

"It's more competitive than people realize on the Republican side," said Jennifer Donahue, a senior adviser for political affairs at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. "First place is up for grabs with an edge towards Romney. You have McCain and [former Arkansas governor Mike] Huckabee in pretty good shape to be the alternative."