The Daily News reports on Italian-American support for Rudy Giuliani here:
About 12 percent of contributions to Giuliani's campaign have come from Italian-Americans, based on a review by The News. That's about double the percentage drawn by Republican rivals John McCain and Romney, and one-third higher than the portion received by Clinton, the review found. 'I think there is less of an Italian-American vote than there once was, but I think there is a still a factor there,' said Michael Barone, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, noting that some of Giuliani's strongest support can be found in states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with particularly large Italian-American populations.
The Giuliani camp likes to say that if their candidate were the Republican nominee, then the electoral map would change in profound ways. Those claims may be overstated. But it's probably true that a Giuliani nomination would expand the Republican brand into Italian-American-heavy states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, even as that brand might retreat from some of its traditional southern bastions.