“And most importantly, as the article above indicates, in 1978 – 2 years before the election - Ronald Reagan had a negative rating of 45%, close to Palin’s current negative rating. Like Palin, Ronald Reagan’s negatives were also the product of media biases and distortions, but he was able to convince the voting public to have confidence in him and made a positive and inspiring case for himself.”
Thanks, Victoria, for posting this reply to the “unelectability” canard . There are numerous polls from the late 1970s that show Reagan with astronomically high “negatives” which are the result of disengaged, tuned out voters who did not know much about him except what they heard on TV. As he began to win primaries, the negatives went down. But his negatives were always higher than those for Ford or some mushy moderate candidate like McCain. And so are Sarah’s. One reason is that there are many liberals who say they have a positive impression of McCain (or any moderate)but that does not mean they will vote for the moderate over a true liberal. So the candidate with higher negatives actually does better at the polls if his support is more intense.
Another deeper reason for the higher, more intense negatives directed toward Reagan and Palin by the left is the old saying, “One always hates what one fears.”(Reagan was feared, and Palin is feared, becasue the left knows that they are serous about their beliefs) The left’s hatred will continue unabated. But persuadable independents (a larger group than the left), whose fear of the conservative is based upon a a lie, are ripe for the picking, if the conservative has the skills to persuade them. Reagan had that skill. Palin has it too. And she has it in spades.
Having higher negative ratings in the general electorate does not make a candidate less electable as long as that candidate can make up any deficit with intensity of support among his or her base. Reagan did that. He was ALWAYS despised with white hot hatred by the left. But he was loved by conservatives and by independents (who according to all the polls are conservative leaners as well). As you point out Reagan’s negatives went below 40% but unless I am very wrong, they always stayed about there. (note that Reagan never rose to the stratospheric approval ratings of the Bushes) but he always got his partisans to the polls and that meant a couple of landslides.
Palin is following the same playbook as Reagan. Her support like Reagan’s is intense. She is, as he was, the most popular with conservatives and Republicans. And her negatives are going down. They will always be higher but this is no disability for her at the polls. There will be a huge turnout of conservatives and the “persuadables” whom she will bring around. She is in very, very good shape. And the enemy knows it.
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We must have grown up in parallel universes. Where I lived, Reagan was so popular that we were forced to coin the term “Reagan Democrat”. I’ll make you a list of congressional votes during his term if you wish, but no president in history enjoyed as much across the aisle support as Ronald Reagan. Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan, and personally I think it’s downright insulting to Ronald Reagan to even make the comparison unless there is a punchline at the end.