Nearly one-third of all Americans say they would “definitely” vote for Rudy:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) now leads former North Carolina Senator John Edwards 48% to 41% in an Election 2008 Presidential match-up. While the GOP hopeful has been ahead of Edwards in every Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, the gap between them had closed to only couple of points in recent months. Giuliani leads by ten points among men and two points among women. The former Mayor leads by eight among unaffiliated voters. Other Rasmussen Reports data shows that 31% of voters say they would definitely vote for Giuliani if he is on the 2008 ballot. Twenty-eight percent (28%) would definitely vote against him. Edwards fares far worse on that scale—20% would definitely vote for him while 39% say they would definitely vote against. Giuliani is the current frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination. Edwards has been consistently in third place among those seeking the Democratic nomination. Edwards trails Senators Hillary Clinton (D) and Barack Obama (D) among Democrats, but performs as well or better than those candidates when matched against Republicans in a general election poll. Edwards is viewed favorably by 47% of voters and unfavorably by 45%. The 2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee has seen his unfavorable ratings climb from 37% at the beginning of 2007. Since November, Guiliani’s stratospheric favorable rating has ranged from 63% to 71%. It is now 66%, down from 70% last month. Still, those figures are far higher than those of any other major Election 2008 candidate (see a summary of ratings for all Republican and Democratic candidates).

Rudy has increased his general election showing against Hillary and Edwards to eight and seven points respectively.