Posted on 10/19/2009 7:48:35 AM PDT by DanZanRyu
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s forthcoming autobiography has been at the top of the Amazon book charts for weeks, and it hasn’t even been released yet. At least in the eyes of the political Left, she is now perhaps America’s most visible national Republican.
But new Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds Palin losing handily in face-to-face march-ups with her two likeliest challengers for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Among likely Republican primary voters, Palin now trails former Arkansas governor-turned-Fox-TV-host Mike Huckabee by 20 points – 55% to 35%.
When her opponent is ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Palin loses by 15 – 52% to 37%.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
When given a list of five candidates and asked who they would vote for in 2012, 29% of Republican voters nationwide say Huckabee, while 24% prefer Romney and 18% Palin.
In July, it was close to a three-way tie: 25% said Romney, 24% Palin and 22% Huckabee.
It’s noteworthy that Huckabee’s gains since July are matched almost precisely by Palin’s decline. That suggests a large pool of voters are committed to choosing between two candidates routinely dismissed as unacceptable in the eyes of Republicans in Washington, DC. At the moment, 47% prefer either Huckabee or Palin while 42% prefer a candidate more acceptable to Republican political leaders. That divide is also reflected, with similar results, in a Huckabee-Romney head to head match-up.
Twenty-one percent (21%) of primary voters also say Palin is the GOP candidate they would least like to see win the party’s presidential nomination. Just nine percent (9%) say the same of Romney, and eight percent (8%) feel that way about Huckabee.
Support for Huckabee and Romney against Palin is nearly the same among both men and women. Suggesting that Romney’s Mormon faith may still be a problem among some Christian conservatives, Palin leads him by 14 points – 52% to 38% - among GOP primary voters who describe themselves as Evangelical Christians. But Romney beats Palin by 26 points among other Protestants – 58% to 32% - and holds similar winning margins among Catholic voters and those of other faiths.
On the other hand, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, beats Palin by 17 points among Evangelical Christians and 29 points among other Protestants. A similar spread is evident among Republican voters of other faiths, but Huckabee has just an eight-point edge over Palin among Catholic voters.
Earlier polling showed that Palin trails Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up.
In early July, 40% of Republican voters nationwide said Palin’s decision to resign as governor of Alaska hurt her chances of winning the party’s presidential nomination in 2012.
They’re now directly injecting the drugs into their carotid artery I guess.
Gloom, despair and agony on me!
McLame was my last RINO VOTE... ONLY REASON HE got that much was .... SARAH!
&&&
Same here. And I suspect there are many like us.
“sad isn’t it?”
It is. I am an evangelical and I won’t support Huck in the primary. I wouldn’t WANT to vote for him in the general but against Obama et al? I’d probably vote for just about anyone.
Number seven, if we can keep Huckabee in the race all the way through, thus preventing McCain or Romney from gaining enough delegates to win the nomination, then maybe, just maybe a deadlocked convention might seek out another candidate. One who can re-unite the Reagan Coalition, save the GOP, and put us back on the conservative track. Of course, my personal favorite to be that man would be FRed Thompson.Do you get it now? - He didn't want Huck, he just didn't want McCain nor Romney.
Many people were saying that the polls had to be mistaken because there was no way the blue collar workers in Ohio and PA were going to vote for a black man................. Think UNIONS!
I’m a Palin supporter(I’d vote for her in any election), but Palin will NEVER be President. Why you ask? Because she didnt finish her term in office.
End of Story. ................................ Lets wait till 2011 primaries and see who draws the biggest crowds before we end the story.
btt
Palin is a failed conservative & failed Christian.
Huckabee is an accomplished conservative & stellar Christian.
What has Huck ever done since Obama has been elected? Host a cable show. Has he ever stuck his neck out and stand up against Obama? Nope. He's taken the easy road and should go back to Arkansas.
I agree. I also didn't like Huckabee's snide attacks against Fred Thompson during the campaign.
I wouldn’t call Huckabee a light weight. From the Iowa primary, he did an effective job of using the media to his advantage against Romney despite operating on a shoe string budget.
Currently Huckabee is using Fox News to boost his profile. So far its working accroding the Rasmussen polls and Public Policy Polling (PPP) surveys. In the past 5 months, PPP survey show Huckabee to be the best potential candidate against Obama. Seaping of PPP, the pollsters will come out its newest 2012 polls on Thursday on how Palin, Romney, Huck, and Pawlenty fare against Obama.
That’s why I want Palin to stay put and help us take back the GOP.
She can be Reagan in a skirt or she can be Perot in a skirt. I expect she’ll choose Reagan.
Sarah Palin is still at 100% with me.
huck’s doing very well. I don’t think even he believed it was possible. I’m not exactly sure why but it could be that people had enough Obama celebrity and want an ordinary dude just like them (or their husband). If that’s correct then maybe Todd Palin should consider running?
Palin will do fine.
She’s gone dark for three months and has had to suffer continued assault. She has made no series of policy speeches on her own behalf as Reagan did. When she does, people will look at her in a new light, and begin to treat her with a new seriousness.
Anyone who uses these polling numbers now and treats them seriously is whistling past the graveyard.
Besides, in 2005, Rudy and Condi Rice were the Republican frontrunners.
Best,
Chris
“She’s gone dark for three months”
she is but she’s not. She posts on facebook so she does have something to say but she doesn’t appear on fox news or even conservative talk radio to defend and discuss her views. She’s letting everyone else define her and she needs to do more, show some strength, or else she’ll be another Quayle or Ferraro.
Disagree all you want, it is what will happen. If the 2012 field is a GOP RINO, Palin and Obama, Obama will win handedly in the electoral college after garnering somewhere less than half of the popular vote, just like Clinton. If we run Palin or another true conservative against Obama, The One is headed back to Chicago. History shows that any other scenario is a pipe dream.
So it would appear. Palin’s our best hope, but putting hope in a third party is like expecting your kicker to carry your team to the Super Bowl.
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