A Look At Buchanan's Brigades

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Mar. 2) -- A new TIME/CNN survey documents the deep divisions within the Republican Party, the rifts that separate the Buchanan Brigades from other GOP voters.

According to a new CNN-TIME Election Monitor, a clear majority of conservative commentator Pat Buchanan's supporters want the Republican platform to call for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. In contrast, less than a quarter of the other major Republican candidates' supporters want such an amendment.

Half of Buchanan voters want the platform to call for a repeal of the ban on the manufacture and sale of assault rifles, but pluralities of all the other candidates' supporters oppose repealing the assault weapon ban.

And Buchanan's supporters' pro-gun position isn't just talk. More than two-thirds of those surveyed said they have a gun in the house.

The survey, released this morning, interviewed 1,002 registered Republicans between Feb. 24 and 27. The project will reinterview voters nationwide throughout this presidential year to measure shifts in public opinion.

The survey also found Buchanan's rapid rise in the polls after the Feb. 20 New Hampshire primary has come mostly at the expense of Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.)

Only a fifth of current Buchanan supporters said that Buchanan was their first choice in November. Nearly a third of them would have voted for Dole if the election were held four months ago. A quarter of today's Buchanan voters were undecided last November.

And where have defectors from Dole's camp gone? A third of the registered Republicans who planned to vote for Dole in November have now defected to Buchanan. Another 21 percent have switched from Dole to former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, and 18 percent have switched to publisher Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes Jr. One out of five former Dole supporters are undecided for whom they'd cast their ballot.

• The Poll