IT'S TOO EARLY, BUT STILL...

[Cliffenstein]

PPP: Obama, Palin tied 46/46 in 2012 polling
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air / July 15, 2010

No, this is not coming from Rassmussen or an internal GOP poll, but from the normally Democrat-sympathetic Public Policy Polling. PPP pitted Barack Obama against five potential Republican challengers for the 2012 presidential campaign, and the only one Obama beat was...Jan Brewer. Even that, PPP admitted, resulted from Brewer's lack of name recognition. The headline, though, is Sarah Palin's dead heat with the President:

"With his approval numbers hitting new lows it's no surprise that Barack Obama's numbers in our monthly look ahead to the 2012 Presidential race are their worst ever this month. He trails Mitt Romney 46-43, Mike Huckabee 47-45, Newt Gingrich 46-45, and is even tied with Sarah Palin at 46. The only person tested he leads is Jan Brewer, who doesn’t have particularly high name recognition on the national level at this point.

It's not that any of the Republican candidates are particularly well liked. Only Huckabee has positive favorability numbers at 37/28. Romney's at 32/33, Gingrich at 32/42, Palin at 37/52, and Brewer at 17/20. But with a majority of Americans now disapproving of Obama it's no surprise that a large chunk of them would replace him as President if they had that choice today.

There are two things driving these strong poll numbers for the Republican candidates. The first is a lead with independents in every match up. Romney leads 48-35 with them, Gingrich is up 50-39, Huckabee has a 46-40 advantage, Palin's up 47-42, and even Brewer has a 38-37 edge."

In case one wonders whether PPP's sample is to blame, the partisan split favors Democrats by five points, 39/34. That's probably overstating the actual size of the gap and the percentage of Democrats in the general population, which means that the independents got short shrift as well. Also note that this poll surveyed registered voters, not likely voters — a sampling technique that would tend to favor Democrats and Obama a little more.

The news is almost uniformly bad for Obama in the poll. His approval rating is now seriously underwater at 45/52. That gets even worse among independents, 40/56. He doesn't get above 46% in any matchup with Republicans, not even Jan Brewer, whom he beats 44/36, with 20% undecided.

For Palin, the numbers show she can play against Obama. She pulls 8% of those who voted for Obama in 2008 and 35% of those who "don't remember" (?!?), which puts her on par for outreach with Gingrich (9%, 40%), Romney (9%, 32%), and slightly better than Huckabee (6%, 32%). If that's not vindication for those who argued that Palin couldn't do as well with unaffiliated voters, it's cetainly something close to it.

Update: There seems to be some confusion in the comments over the number of people who claimed not to remember how they voted in 2008. That was 9% of the respondents in the survey (combined with those who voted third party). Since Obama won the 2008 popular vote by seven points (53/46) and this Dem +5 poll shows only 46% of respondents acknowledging their vote for Obama, I'd say it's a healthy probability that most of that 9% voted for Obama and don’t want to acknowledge it now. Of that 9%, Palin wins 35%, Gingrich wins 40% and so on.

[tin00can]

Memo to republicans:
Please, please run Palin in 2012.

Sincerely,
Everybody who hates republicans.

No matter how dumb democrats are, they aren't this dumb (well, OK, yes they are, but still):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyvlpVax4yI
He spoon-feeds her answers, she repeats them and still can't get them right, on the network that loves her.

[invaziondrummer]

Memo to republicans:
Please, please run Palin in 2012.

Sincerely,
Everybody who hates republicans.

No matter how dumb democrats are, they aren't this dumb (well, OK, yes they are, but still):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyvlpVax4yI
He spoon-feeds her answers, she repeats them and still can't get them right, on the network that loves her.

just wow. That was hard to watch from a position of constant cringe.

[LuciferSanchez]

If she wins the presidency, she will probably quit midway through her term.


Palin's an empty suit who latches on to anything controversial just to keep her name in the news. I don't understand the why many people are drawn to follow her and think what she says is important.

[SkyDog112046]

I don't see how anyone could vote for her if she ended up running against Obama. She's not even remotely qualified. McCain was a qualified candidate and Palin was such a poor choice as a running mate that she cost him the election. She couldn't even handle being governor of one of our least populous states without fucking it up. She makes W look like a rocket scientist. Anyone who would vote for Sarah Palin deserves to be declared incompetent and lose their voting privileges.

[Crazy Levi]

I don't see how anyone could vote for her if she ended up running against Obama. She's not even remotely qualified. McCain was a qualified candidate and Palin was such a poor choice as a running mate that she cost him the election. She couldn't even handle being governor of one of our least populous states without fucking it up. She makes W look like a rocket scientist. Anyone who would vote for Sarah Palin deserves to be declared incompetent and lose their voting privileges.

Shitstein and the rest of the right-wing KISS Army are salivating at the prospect of voting for Palin. Luckily, they and the Tea-Party won't be able to produce even a small fraction of the votes they need to put this moron in office, so I don't think we have much to worry about.

If you vote for Palin, you hate America.

[bane]

I don't see how anyone could vote for her if she ended up running against Obama. She's not even remotely qualified. McCain was a qualified candidate and Palin was such a poor choice as a running mate that she cost him the election. She couldn't even handle being governor of one of our least populous states without fucking it up. She makes W look like a rocket scientist. Anyone who would vote for Sarah Palin deserves to be declared incompetent and lose their voting privileges.

Shitstein and the rest of the right-wing KISS Army are salivating at the prospect of voting for Palin. Luckily, they and the Tea-Party won't be able to produce even a small fraction of the votes they need to put this moron in office, so I don't think we have much to worry about.

If you vote for Palin, you hate America.

I'm not remotely concerned about her winning the office. I am concerned about her winning the nomination though. That would spell 4 more years of Obama with a perceived mandate due to the landslide he'd win by. Oh joy.

[LitaJett]

I hate to break it to you, but most likely Obama will be re-elected.

And any poll I just searched for show pretty much these results.

Barack Obama (D) 55%

Sarah Palin (R) 42%

Neither 3%

That is pretty accurate considering she cost McCain the election. American people didn't want her as Vice President, they sure as hell don't want her as President.

[tin00can]

I hate to break it to you, but most likely Obama will be re-elected.

And any poll I just searched for show pretty much these results.

Barack Obama (D) 55%

Sarah Palin (R) 42%

Neither 3%

That is pretty accurate considering she cost McCain the election. American people didn't want her as Vice President, they sure as hell don't want her as President.

So Palin is already the nominee?

[SmokingGun]

Palin? No chance whatsoever. The only time when she could have won is when she first hit the national scene, for like 2 or 3 weeks. Then it was obvious to all that she was a dud. Surely the Republicans have someone better?