The three populous states are seen as crucial swing states in any election, with their voters never clearly in the Republican or Democrat camp.
WASHINGTON: Republican Rudolph Giuliani is favoured over Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for the US presidency in three key electoral states, while ex-vice president Al Gore might be the Democrats strongest choice for 2008, a new poll showed on Thursday.
The Quinnipiac University poll showed that former New York mayor Giuliani, who is leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination, would beat Democrat Senator Clinton solidly in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The three populous states are seen as crucial swing states in any election, with their voters never clearly in the Republican or Democrat camp.
In Florida, Giuliani topped Clinton -- the wife of former president Bill Clinton -- 49-41 per cent; in Ohio 46-41 per cent, and in Pennsylvania 47-43 per cent.
The poll showed that Ohio had switched sides for Giuliani from an earlier March survey, but that she held the same against the Republican in Pennsylvania and gained ground in Florida.
However, the Quinnipiac numbers showed that non-candidate Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential race to George W. Bush in a controversial Florida showdown, could do better than Clinton against Giuliani in those states. Giuliani led the now-global warming activist 47-43 per cent in Florida and the two were tied at 44 per cent each in Pennsylvania.
But Gore trailed Giuliani in Ohio much more, with the poll 47-39 per cent for the Republican.
Gore, vice president in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, has steadfastly maintained he has no intention of running for the White House again. Instead, he is riding his fame as the creator of the Oscar-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
"Mayor Rudoph Giuliani remains the front-runner, but he and the entire Democratic field should wonder if Al Gore will become an inconvenient truth in the 2008 presidential race and go for the biggest Oscar of them all," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
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