PPP: Obama, Palin tied 46/46 in 2012 polling

Let me first begin my discussion of this month’s PPP monthly poll of GOP contenders with the findings of today’s Rasmussen daily tracking poll, the Gallup daily tracking poll, and the CBS poll released a couple of days ago that all show Obama’s job approval either at 44% or 45%. This confirms PPP’s findings yesterday that Obama’s job approval is currently at 45%. Disapproval with PPP is at 52%.

I would also like to call attention to the ideological breakdown of the poll L: 19 M: 38 C: 43 which pretty well conforms to what Gallup found in mid-June after sampling over 10,000 respondents that the current ideological breakdown in America is L: 20 M: 35 C: 42 and thus the normal skewing that normally takes place in PPP monthly polls to portray Obama as doing better than he really is (vastly oversampling moderates and undersampling conservatives)is not present here and thus I believe July’s poll does present a fairly accurate depiction of the current national political landscape.

But let me say that I would encourage you not to dwell at all at the favorables/unfavorables (F/UF) of the GOP contenders because frankly they make no sense at all across the board. Here are 3 categories that illustrate my point:

1)Does anyone on our side really believe that of the 4 GOP contenders (I did not include Jan Brewer in my analysis as she is not running for POTUS imho)that Sarah Palin leads CONSERVATIVES with only a 65% F and despite that low number still leads Mitt Romney by 17 points. There is no way that Palin is below 75% among conservatives and the other GOP contenders are as low as they are either. Even the Econ/youguv polls on Sarah Palin which show her F/UF not to be very good always report her CONSERVATIVE numbers above 75%.

2)And those familiar with the GOP do you really believe that Palin with only a 68% F with the GOP party members leads the other contenders. In this political climate there are at least 30% of Republicans not willing give any GOP presidential contender the thumbs up or still remain undecided. C’mon man. We didn’t just get off the bus.

3) And with the 65+ category Palin is at 36 F, Gingrich at 32 F and Romney at 39 F whereas it was only last week’s poll by Econ/youguv that showed all the GOP contenders (Huck was not polled) in the mid 50′s with seniors. PPP consistently inflates Obama’s approval with seniors and low-ball the favorables of the GOP contenders. This month he was given a 50 approval whereas with Econ/youguv each week he is lucky to garner 35% thumbs up with the over 65 crowd. And to further prove my point the most recent Gallup weekly poll showed Obama’s approval with seniors at 39%.

Let’s get to the meat of the poll which are the results provided by PPP in head to head (h/h)matchups of Obama vs the 4 GOP presidential contenders.

First let me say that the political landscape has indeed shifted with the results that PPP will have a much more difficult time asserting or rationalizing in the future that Sarah Palin is unelectable or too polarizing of a figure based on this month’s h/h results against Obama.

Let’s start with the h/h overall category:
OBAMA GOP CONTENDER
PALIN 46 46
HUCK 45 47
MITT 43 46
NEWT 45 46

I will agree a bit with PPP’s premise that Obama’s downfall in the h/h matchups are due to his falling poll numbers but in a two party system it is a zero-sum game where one party loses the other party gains. I have not changed my mind at all that Obama’s re-election bid will be referendum on the Messiah and his job performance in office. It is what it is. The GOP is the opposition party.

Now regarding Sarah Palin, despite the unbelievable and unprecedented propaganda campaign launched against her by the Left on a daily basis for the last 23 months and virtually ignoring Mitt, Huck or Newt with its venom, Sarah has not been marginalized or diminished in importance and certainly not destroyed and in fact far from being unelectable as the anti-Palin forces like to claim, she is just as viable as any of the GOP contenders at the moment according to PPP, which happens by the way as Ed noted to be a Democratic pollster, which if you reads its blogs on Palin for the last 18 months or so has set out on its own search and destroy mission to send Palin to the sidelines.

Here from PPP on March 18, 2009 is a sample of their attitude towards Palin running for POTUS:

“…a new national PPP poll finds that nominating Palin could be a DEATH WISH for the party, with Barack Obama leading Palin 55-35 in a hypothetical contest.”

“It’s a long way until 2012, but it appears the Republicans nominating Palin would lead to the BIGGEST LANDSLIDE in a generation.”

I wonder how PPP feels about that blog post today.

But it gets better for Sarah Palin. Palin is only shown getting 81% of the GOP vote against Obama, Huck 85%, Newt 83% and Mitt 82%. In the 2008 election McCain, not hardly a favorite of the base of the GOP got 89% of the GOP vote. Does anybody really believe that with the pent-up anger, hostility and resentment shown to the Messiah by 2012 by our side that any one of these 4 GOP candidates could not command close to 90% of the GOP vote, no matter who the GOP nominee is. Thus I believe the GOP contenders are actually doing better h/h than PPP is revealing today.

And does anyone really believe that Sarah Palin, a Reagan conservative would only get 79% of the conservative vote against Obama in 2012? Right now Survey USA has Carly Fiorina getting 86% of the conservative vote against Boxer in her Senate contest and that’s in California.

Now all GOP contenders believe it or not defeat Obama in a h/h contest with FEMALE voters, with Sarah Palin actually beating Obama 47% to 44% with women. Isn’t one major part of the unelectable meme is that Palin’s high unfavorabilities among WOMEN that Obama would trounce Palin because of the huge gender gap that a Palin vs Obama contest would generate. I think there are many unhappy politicos and pundits getting drunk tonight with the release of this one tidbit from PPP.

And another long-standing narrative by the anti-Palin forces is that Palin doesn’t “play well with INDEPENDENT voters but only to the hardcore conservative or Republican base, that indies have bought into the notion that Palin is not qualified to be POTUS and have bought into the 2008 campaign narrative that she is a clueless, unsophisticated idiot. For the first time Palin leads Obama among INDEPENDENT voters 47% to 42%. Another meme bites the dust.

But the piece de resistance of the poll is Palin’s performance against Obama among WHITE voters. In PPP’s April h/h poll Palin trounced the Messiah 55% to 38%. How many of you remember that? I don’t think any of the MSM covered that. Well three months later with the same type of accurate ideological sample taken Palin now defeats Obama among WHITE voters 55% to 36%, a 19 point gap. And to confirm Obama’s low approval numbers among WHITE voters yesterday PPP found that his approval/disapproval numbers were now 35/62. Refer to Jay Cost’s piece over at Real Clear Politics on WHITE voters from a couple of months back where he asserts that if Obama falls to lets say 38% with WHITE voters, it is not inconceivable that the GOP nominee could receive in a zero-sum game as much as 60% of that vote and win the election and that is even if Obama still gets 95% of the Black vote and 2/3 of the Hispanic vote. And again Palin is currently leading Obama by 19 points among WHITE voters. You wanna bet the MSM will bury this nugget as they did in April.

Now let me turn to the age category. Here are the h/h results of all 4 GOP contenders (Obama’s total first):
PALIN HUCK NEWT MITT
18-29 55/38 64/32 57/39 58/31
30-45 43/49 43/45 41/49 41/45
46-65 44/46 41/51 42/48 39/50
65+ 48/44 44/46 50/45 45/48

Despite who the GOP contender is Obama loses the middle class and the folks who pay the most taxes (30-64).

What is also worrisome to Obama and the Left is that Palin is able to keep Obama’s share of the 18-29 vote down to 55%. In 2008 he got 66% of it.

Having said that one can see why Palin trails slightly versus her male opponents in the h/h findings-simple she doesn’t play as well to seniors. It is always the older folks who are the hardest to convert to your way of thinking, who are the hardest to budge from their traditional ideas of what a GOP presidential nominee should look like or how he should present himself and regretfully most of the occupational misogyny that still simmers in America rests with these folks over 65 who just can’t wrap themselves around the idea of a female president or a female being CIC. Now I am not saying there is a huge percentage of folks over 65 who feel this way (my own mother actually felt this way about all female candidates)but there may be enough of these folks who could tip the GOP primary to one of Palin’s male opponents in close contest or perhaps not vote for Palin if she is the nominee by voting 3rd party or staying home or heaven forbid Obama and therefore tip the balance to the Messiah in 2012. Thank God Palin still has another 18 months to turn this kind of sentiment around. Frankly with Palin’s impeccable Reagan conservative and Tea Party credentials compared to those of Mitt, Huck or Newt there is no way that Palin should be constantly behind with GOP or conservative seniors imho except for the fact she came out of her mother’s womb as a female.

In conclusion, let me say there is no way in hell that the anti-Palin forces on either the Left or the Right wanted to see this day come to pass. Instead they felt if Palin’s make competitors could strike out and stake their claim to the nomination (especially Romney) with Palin in turn self-destructing politically because of her perceived instability and rogue behavior or being marginalized with the aid of Obama’s MSM propaganda machine of journalists, pundits and the entertainment community, thereby causing her supporters and swing or undecided voters to become permanently estranged from her and her message, that could send Palin to the sidelines forever.

Well neither scenario has materialized. Huck is sinking fast on Intrade, only raised 1/4m dollars in the last quarter and may become the male version of Oprah, Mitt’s state poll numbers have plunged by double-digits over the last two months since Newt entered the race, and Newt is still playing catch-up to Palin despite his recent surge.

And as for Palin despite the daily onslaught of lies, mockery, verbal abuse and condemnation by her enemies on both sides of the aisle she remains undaunted and unflappable as she pursues a political course of re-introducing the United States to Reagan conservatism and strives to help Americans to take back their country from the socialist hordes.

However,Sarah Palin has not yet attained full-blown LEGITIMACY. There are still many skeptics and doubting Thomases on our side who believe the MSM meme that she is unelectable or unqualified. I predicted that over a year ago that full-blown LEGITIMACY would not come until after the midterms depending on her success of getting her endorsees across the finish line in November and her influence and leverage to help the GOP win back at least one house of Congress. Thank God, Sarah still has 18 months to close the sale. Some GOP primary voters can be mighty stubborn at times.

technopeasant on July 15, 2010 at 6:37 PM