ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – The “political equivalent of a subway series” could be shaping up between Mayor Giuliani and Senator Clinton in the 2008 presidential race, an independent pollster said Tuesday.

Releasing the latest WNBC-TV/Marist College national poll, Lee Miringoff said things are looking reasonably bright for Republican Mr. Giuliani if he wants to run for president. On the Democratic side, while New York’s junior senator is still far ahead of the field, Mr. Miringoff said she faces a tougher challenge because she is a woman.

Asked about voting for a woman for president regardless of which party she represented, 30 percent of registered voters said they were not likely to vote for her.

“It’s a very uphill fight for her, 85 years after women got the right to vote,” said Mr. Miringoff, head of Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion.

In a theoretical head-to-head matchup, Mr. Giuliani led Mrs. Clinton, 49 percent to 42, percent in the poll. She trailed Republican Senator McCain 48 percent to 43 percent.

The poll did have Mrs. Clinton leading Secretary Rice, 49 percent to 43 percent.

Mr. Giuliani, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton are all considered potential 2008 candidates. Ms. Rice has said she is not interested in running.

Mr. Miringoff’s Poughkeepsie, N.Y.-based pollsters also threw Mayor Bloomberg into the mix by testing him as an independent. In a three-way race, Mr. Giuliani was at 44 percent, Mrs. Clinton at 39 percent, and Democrat-turned-Republican Mr. Bloomberg at 8 percent.

Mr. Bloomberg’s chief political adviser, deputy mayor Kevin Sheekey, has been very publicly trying for months to get his boss interested in running for the White House. Thus far, Mr. Bloomberg has demurred.

“If he wants to do this, he’ll have to show some interest,” said Mr. Miringoff when asked about Mr. Bloomberg’s distant third-place showing against Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton.

Fifty-four percent of voters said Mr. Giuliani should run for president. He was the only one of the most-often mentioned potential contenders who drew a majority of voter support. Forty-seven percent said Mr. McCain should run and 46 percent said Mrs. Clinton should take the plunge.

Twenty-three percent of Republican voters said they favored Mr. Giuliani as their party’s candidate while 20 percent favored Ms. Rice and 15 percent backed Mr. McCain. No other Republican broke into double digits. Another potential New York contender, Governor Pataki, was at 2 percent among Republican voters.

Also among Republican voters, 70 percent said Mr. Giuliani was “about right” ideologically while 12 percent said he was too liberal. The former mayor’s support for abortion and gay rights and tough gun-control legislation is seen by some as a major hurdle with conservative voters who tend to dominate the Republican presidential nominating process.

“Right now, Republicans find him to be acceptable ideologically,” said Mr. Miringoff. “The question is: As they get to know him better, and in a campaign mode, do those numbers change?”

In fact, 57 percent of all voters said it was not likely that Mr. Giuliani could be elected. Sixty-six percent said it was unlikely Mrs. Clinton could make it.

WNBC-TV/Marist’s telephone poll of 1,018 registered voters was conducted Sept. 18-20 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.