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Clearwater, FL — Rudy Giuliani is facing a major uphill climb as he conducts a last-ditch, one-day plane tour to five Florida cities Monday. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that the former NYC mayor has lost 50 percent of his support in the last month in his must-win state and is now down nearly 20 points to both Mitt Romney and John McCain.

LIKELY REPUBLICAN PRIMARY VOTERS

•                    1/28       1/14          12/20/07
• Giuliani       14          20                28
• Huckabee     13         19                 21
• McCain         32         22                 13
• Romney        31         19                  20

What makes the drop even more stunning is that it has taken place as the mayor dropped more than $6 million campaigning in Florida, put up nearly a dozen television ads and spent the last 20 days straight in the Sunshine State.

But, Giuliani often touts on the stump that he pulled off the “impossible” in New York, and told a Tampa audience in December, “I just don’t pray for miracles, I just don’t hope for miracles, I expect miracles.” On the first flight this morning from Orlando to Clearwater, I asked him whether he is holding true to his philosophy to always “underpromise and overdeliver,” by repeatedly stating that he will win Florida. Giuliani didn’t flinch. “We’re gonna deliver Florida,” he said. (video above)

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Boca Raton, FL — It is not often that Giuliani senior adviser Tony Carbonetti agrees to an on-camera interview but with Communications Director Katie Levinson distracted for a moment, I was able to throw a couple questions to “Carbo” following tonight’s debate.

The highlights:

– His reaction to dipping Florida polls: “The (New York) Giants are 12 point underdogs. I don’t care what the pollsters say, you still got to play the game.”

–He calls New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger an “idiot,” in reaction to the Times’ editorial endorsing John McCain and harshly criticizing Giuliani.

Boca Raton, FL — While recent polling out of Florida makes the GOP primary look increasingly like a two-man battle between John McCain and Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani is arguing that we should not count him out yet.

An internal Giuliani memo suggests that the most recent polls report “conflicting results,” noting that five public polls released in the last 24 hours show McCain leading in two polls, Romney leading in two polls and a three-way tie in the last. It also argues that absentee and early voting may work in the campaign’s advantage since Giuliani has had the state to himself for the last three weeks.

But the memo does not account for the latest Mason-Dixon poll out today, showing Romney at 30%, McCain at 26% and Giuliani at 18%, further proof that despite the memo, the former NYC mayor continues to lose ground in the Sunshine State.

Read the memo below:

A handful of FL public polls released over the past few days are reporting conflicting results. These latest rounds of fluctuating public polls indicate that the race is wide open and public polling is volatile.

There were 5 public polls released over the past 24 hours, claiming different candidates to be leading.

Further complicating matters, 3 of these polls were fielded on the exact same nights (1/20-1/22). Insider Advantage reports Romney leading, St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald reports McCain leading, and Strategic Vision reports a 3 way tie.

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Estero, FL — Despite spending more than 50 days in Florida during the last year and having the state to himself for the last three weeks (during which he launched 8 TV ads), Rudy Giuliani continues to slide in the latest polls. The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times latest poll show Giuliani tied for third place in his must win state, down 20 points from a November poll.

• John McCain 25
• Mitt Romney 23
• Rudy Giuliani 15
• Mike Huckabee 15

(Margin of error is +/-5%)
Giuliani’s response today to the falling polls? “I think the reality is we are gaining support, I think your going to see that over the course of the next three or four days. Our campaign is now in high gear. I think the issues that we are hitting on are the key ones to the people of Florida. And the most important one is proven leadership which the people of Florida want. And I think they want someone who understands how to turn around an economy, which I have done before. And I think they want someone who can lead this country in the terrorists; war against us. As those ideas seep through, and get through, we are gonna do very well here….I believe we are going to win here. This has to go day by day. Each day you gotta work at it, and each day you make progress.”

Though one important caveat to the polling numbers in the Sunshine State is the fact that Floridians have the opportunity to early vote (began on Jan. 14) and absentee vote. Nearly 270,000 registered GOPers have already cast their ballots. Additionally, Giuliani’s campaign has been conducting a very aggressive get out the vote operation and pushing potential supporters to vote early, meaning polls in the lead up to the election and day of exit polls may fail to accurately predict the ultimate outcome.

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Jacksonville, FL — Despite falling polls and a shortage of campaign cash, Rudy Giuliani attempted to assure voters Monday that his strategy is “playing out the way we thought it would play out.”

The latest polls out Monday showed Giuliani trailing in his home state of New York to Sen. John McCain. Giuliani is down by 12 in a new Sienna poll after leading McCain by 33 points in December and is trailing the Arizona senator in his home state by 15 percent in the latest Marist poll.

The NY polls come on the heels of two other recent polls showing him also losing ground in New Jersey and Connecticut–two states his strategists referred to as “momentum-proof,” and fall in line with his fall in national polling.

Giuliani’s reaction to the polls: it’s all about Florida. “For us, it’s Florida. We’ll think about New York and California. We’ll think about Illinois. We’ll think about Missouri….we’ll think about everything on the morning of the 30th of January,” Giuliani said. “It’s playing out the way we thought it would play out. Now the most important thing is, we thought it would play out with us our winning Florida so that’s going to be an important thing for us to accomplish…it’s all about Florida.”

Hizzoner will make one stop in the West Palm Beach area Tuesday before returning to New York to raise some necessary campaign bucks. He has previously said that he is planning to spend “almost everything” on the Sunshine State primary.

Pensacola, FL — Giuliani is continuing to hammer home his message of tax cuts and fiscal conservatism as he conducts a two-day swing through the heavily conservative Florida panhandle. Despite having the state all to himself for the last few weeks, polls show Giuliani stuck in idle, in a statistical tie with Romney, McCain and Huckabee in the state. (See purple trend line above c/o pollster.com)

With that, the campaign is launching their new TV ad, “Jumpstart,” hoping to reinforce his new fiscal conservative push and pander a bit to FL voters on catastrophe insurance. The campaign sees McCain and Romney as vulnerable on the issue of tax cuts.

Transcript after the jump…..

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Clinton pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn points out that the three national polls out this weekend have Hillary in the lead — and two of them show her with a double digit advantage over Barack Obama. And while her lead has narrowed to 5 points in the third poll, her favorability, experience, and change-bringing numbers have all improved.

While national polls are a little more important now that Iowa and New Hampshire are out of the way and there’s a quasi-national primary on February 5, what happens in Nevada and South Carolina could turn these numbers upside down before Super Tuesday next month.

Read Penn’s full memo after the jump.

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“It’s a good way to ring in the new year,” Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said last night in response to the new Des Moines register poll showing Senator Obama up four percentage points to 32% over Hillary Clinton’s 25%.

At his New Year’s Eve rally in Ames, Obama seemed pleased and announced that he was up “six or seven” points in the poll. “It’s beyond the margain of error - so we might just pull this thing off.” Of course the New Year’s Eve/Obama revelers cheered.

But caucuses are notoriously difficult to poll and even the Register cautioned relying on this one too heavily. The next morning in the sober six degree weather, Obama told a gym full of voters/canvass volunteers in Des Moines that polls are not enough. “The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus. The only thing that counts is whether over the next 72 hours, you’re willing to work for this and make the phone calls and knock on the doors and grab your friends and grab your neighbors and say it is time for us to deliver on change. That’s the only thing, that’s the only poll that we’re paying attention to is Thursday.”

He later told reporters on his plane that he hasn’t been paying “too much attention to polls at this point.” He added, “Now I think it’s going to come down to who gets their supporters out and I’ll put my money on my organization - it’s as good, and as dedicated and as intense as I’ve ever seen.”

Obama does regularly reference “recent polls” in his stump speech to prove to Iowans that he is more electable than Senators Clinton and Edwards. He tells voters that polls show that he can beat all five of the Republicans running for the nomination while other Democrats cannot. So clearly he’s paying attention to some polls.

At a rally in Keokuk, Iowa, Senator Barack Obama cited “recent polls” showing that if nominated, he would beat each of the top five Republicans running, should they win their party’s nod. Hoping to woo undecided voters in the crowd, he then explained why his two main opponents in Iowa, Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are not as electable. He was sure to qualify the statement by saying that he understands that in the race for Democratic nominee, “We’re all just trying out for quarterback, but after the election, we’re all gonna be on the same team.”

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He made the same arguments in his previous event in Fort Madison, Iowa, but didn’t call his opponents out by name.

Rudy Giuliani has dropped from first to third place in Florida according to the latest poll released by Rasmussen Reports this afternoon.

The results:

Mike Huckabee - 27%
Mitt Romney - 23%
Rudy Giuliani - 19%
Fred Thompson - 9%
John McCain - 6%

Rasmussen Survey of 685 Likely GOP Voters
December 13, 2007 Margin of Error +/- 4

The poll comes as Giuliani is set to give a significant speech Saturday in Tampa about making America strong again and had intended to do it from a position of strength, Florida, where he has held a signficant lead for months. The former New York City mayor is staking out a different strategy for the nomination–one based on surviving defeats in the early primary states with a victories in Florida on January 29th and many of the February 5th primary states.

A Real Clear Politics average of recent polls show Giuliani with nearly 13 point lead in the Sunshine State over Romney and Huckabee. This is the first poll showing Giuliani trailing in Florida so it remains to be seen if other polls show a similar trend but it must be making some folks in Rudy campaign headquarters a little nervous.