To read some of the reviews telling Sarah Palin it’s over as to any hope of winning a general election, you would think she would be down in the polls versus Obama by an enormous margin, particularly if a poll were taken in the days after the Tucson shooting when the media was in full blame mode tying Palin’s electoral map to the shooting.
But if this poll conducted January 9-12 by Greenberg Quinlin Rosner, a Democratic polling firm, for Democracy Corps is accurate, Palin is down 10% among voters and 6% among people who vote in 2010:
This is a significant margin, but hardly the end of times predicted by many. Much of Obama’s strongest support comes from “drop off voters,” i.e., those who didn’t vote in mid-year elections. (I get this definition from another Greenberg survey using such definition.) Motivating the base and getting out people who didn’t vote in 2010 would seem to be a key for Obama in 2012.
Mitt Romney, the only other candidate tested versus Obama, did better, basically coming out even:
I don’t know about the accuracy of this polling firm, but the poll is being touted by Democrats because of other findings supposedly showing that the public is not as against Obamacare as generally thought.
Considering the beating Palin took in the media during the days in which the poll was being conducted, being down 10% is much better than would have been expected.
How about we let the primary process work, instead of throwing candidates overboard based on perceptions which may or may not be accurate, and which in any event are premature.
Update 1-20-2011: PPP has released a poll showing Obama much stronger than in the Greenberg poll, up 17 points over Palin and 5 points over Romney. I am generally skeptical of PPP, a Democratic polling firm which does the polling for DailyKos, for reasons I hope to articulate in a post in the future. I don’t so much question its polling as such, but the way the polling seems to be formulated to push Democratic messaging. It’s hard to find a PPP poll since the November election which is not spun as deep trouble for Republicans.
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