Poll: Huckabee GOP front-runner in 2012

MCLEAN, Va., Nov. 5 (UPI) -- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the Republican front-runner for the 2012 U.S. presidential race, a USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated Thursday.

Huckabee, a 2008 presidential hopeful who's now the host of a weekend Fox News talk show, dismissed the poll as meaningless.

"It's like speculating who's going to be the best actor next year when we don't even know what the movies are," he told the newspaper.

The poll of 1,021 adults, including 301 Republicans, taken Saturday and Sunday, found that after Huckabee the top three Republican contenders for the presidential nomination are former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, former Alaskan governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and political consultant and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Seventy-one percent of declared Republicans would "seriously consider" voting for Huckabee, 65 percent would consider voting for Romney or Palin and 60 percent would consider voting for Gingrich, the poll indicated.

In poll responses on whether the prospects are "qualified to be president," only Huckabee reached the 50 percent mark.

USA Today observed that all four top candidates either are releasing or have just released books. The newspaper speculated the candidates could be taking cues from Barack Obama, whose "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams of My Father" helped lend him visibility and credibility as a U.S. senator before he successfully ran for U.S. president.

The USA Today/Gallup Poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points and a margin of error among Republicans of 7 points.