John McCain is ahead in the polls these days but things have not been so rosy for him early on in the year. According to USAElectionPolls.com John McCain hit a low of 7 percent in the national polls in a poll dated very early that month. New Hampshire, the state that launched John McCain into the upper tier, had him polling at just 12 percent, which was double digits behind both Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.
USAElectionPolls.com has polls released as early as mid-November 2004 which was just a few weeks after George Bush was re-elected to his second term in office. The earliest of national
polls by Gallup (http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/gallup-national-polls.html) showed Rudy Giuliani
leading John McCain 47 percent to 27 percent. Jeb Bush was third at just 17 percent according to that poll.
Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses, which slowed down Mitt Romney's early surge in the polls in which he led all of the early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada and South
Carolina. That opened the door for John McCain to win in New Hampshire. Fred Thompson's southern strategy slowed down Mike Huckabee in South Carolina, which kept the door open yet again
for John McCain in South Carolina. With that, John McCain has emerged as the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
The polls suggest that John McCain is the most electable Republican candidate in the race against Hillary Clinton (http://www.presidentelectionpolls.com/2008/presidential-matchups/hillary-clinton-vs-john-mccain.html)
and Barack Obama.
On the Democratic side, John Edwards has suspended his campaign, making this a two horse race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
USAElectionPolls.com has become the Internet's most visited polling archive on the Internet, according to Quantcast, with approximately 700,000 unique monthly visitors.
Reference: John McCain's 2008 Polling Numbers (http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/candidates/John-McCain.html).