Monday, November 22, 2010

Interpreting Palin's Polling Numbers

Quick: what percentage of Republicans like a typical Republican politician?

It's a bit hard, it turns out, to answer this question.  That's because most ordinary voters don't know more than a handful of national politicians, so one has to figure out what to do with all those "don't knows" if one wants a clean comparison.

But the simple answer is: most Republicans like most Republican politicians.

That's important, because I've started to see some pundits entirely misinterpret Sarah Palin's favorable ratings among Republicans.  Here's Frank Rich, yesterday:
Of course Palin hasn’t decided to run yet. Why rush? In the post-midterms Gallup poll she hit her all-time high unfavorable rating (52 percent), but in the G.O.P. her favorable rating is an awesome 80 percent, virtually unchanged from her standing at the end of 2008 (83 percent). She can keep floating above the pack indefinitely as the celebrity star of a full-time reality show where she gets to call all the shots. 
There's nothing "awesome" at all about a well-known Republican having an 80% favorable rating among Republicans.  Gallup doesn't give her unfavorable rating among Republicans in the poll Rich cites, but in the previous polling back in July, her favorable/unfavorable was at 76/20.  Let's call that a 4 to1 ratio.  By that standard, of the candidates Gallup reported then, Palin finished ahead of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but well behind Mike Huckabee (65/10) and a bit behind Bobby Jindal (45/9). 

The whole conceit of Rich's column is that the normal rules don't apply to Palin -- for example, he notes that her endorsements of Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Tom Tancredo should have hurt her (although outside of the Alaska fiasco, it's hard to say that Palin in particular was a loser in those races, since she was hardly the only prominent Republican to endorse those candidates, and she had plenty of winners as well).

But that conceit breaks down if one accepts that the Sage of Wasilla is not, after all, doing very well with GOP voters.  Not only is the 80% favorable number (with a 4:1 favorable ratio) nothing special, but she just doesn't do very well in ballot test questions.  She's at 16%, tied with Huck for second behind Romney, in the latest Gallup. Given her significant advantage in name recognition, it's pretty clear that a lot of Republicans who say they like her also have very little interest in voting for her for president.

As I've said before, I'm not going to predict a winner at this point for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.  What I will try to do is to interpret the evidence that we see.  And to the extent that the early polling is important, what it tells us is that Sarah Palin is a legitimate contender, but hardly a juggernaut, and hardly impervious (yes, even among Republicans) to negative stories in either the nonpartisan or the partisan press.

5 comments:

  1. >for example, he notes that her endorsements of Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Tom Tancredo should have hurt her

    Palin never endorsed Sharron Angle.

    >although outside of the Alaska fiasco, it's hard to say that Palin in particular was a loser in those races, since she was hardly the only prominent Republican to endorse those candidates, and she had plenty of winners as well

    But Palin's endorsements received a great deal more attention than those of other prominent Republicans, and they came to be thought of as Palin candidates. I suspect even Angle is thought of as a Palin candidate, despite the fact that Palin didn't endorse her, simply because of the widespread misconception that she did.

    Some Republicans have even started blaming Palin for their failure to capture the Senate. Logically, this isn't a very compelling argument: a Palin endorsement only clearly cost them one Senate seat (in Deleware), and they needed three more seats to gain control. But when paired with the misconception that Palin backed Angle, along with fantasies of luring Lieberman and Nelson to the Republican side, I could see why some Republicans conclude that she spoiled their chances of Senate takeover. And anyway, every seat counts, and the Republicans will have a harder time capturing the Senate in the future.

    Their lack of control of the Senate is certain to sting in the coming months, when they realize the difficulty it poses for their agenda. And at that point there's going to be increasing resentment toward Palin, even among people who otherwise might have appreciated the work she did in helping Republicans recapture the House. So make no mistake: she was significantly hurt by the O'Donnell fiasco. I don't know if that'll keep her from being nominated, but I suspect it decreases the likelihood of it.

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  2. I'll take your word for it on Angle (I trusted Rich's column, FWIW).

    I agree with you that it's easy to overstate the importance of Palin's endorsements (or non-endorsements!). My only point is that this business about her making mistakes and only gaining ground isn't matched by the evidence, which is that Palin does in fact suffer consequences when she makes mistakes.

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  3. After Angle won the nomination, a Daily Caller article claimed that Palin was about to endorse her. I haven't found any record that she ever did so, but it seems that if she did it was after the primary was over.

    Rich didn't say when Palin endorsed Angle.

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  4. When I said Palin never endorsed Angle, I meant pre-nomination, which is all that matters in the discussion. Rich's statement may be technically correct (and even that's unclear), but it's irrelevant to his point unless he thinks Palin backed Angle in the primaries over an establishment Republican (an assertion I've been seeing widely in the media). The GOP establishment doesn't regard it as a sin to endorse a candidate who has already won the Republican nomination. They regard it as a sin to help get an unelectable, or less electable, candidate nominated in the first place. Palin bears no direct responsibility for Reid's victory, though Angle was still part of the insurgent movement in which Palin played an important role.

    >My only point is that this business about her making mistakes and only gaining ground isn't matched by the evidence

    I didn't interpret Rich to be saying that Palin was politically invincible. I interpreted him to be saying that mistakes which would be lethal to other politicians (such as quitting her governorship) haven't appeared to slow her down one bit in her path to the Republican nomination.

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  5. I think Palin-skeptics are also putting too much weight on early polling. A lot of the people in these polls won't ever go anywhere, and if Palin is a lot of conservative's second or third choice - especially once Huckabee inevitably falls off - she could be very strong.

    It's too early to be putting much weight in primary horse-race polls, whether they like Palin or not.

    The argument for Palin, I think, is that (1) she has by far the best financial base of any of the Republicans, given the amount of grassroots money she has access to, (2) the more moderate Republican is a huge underdog in a Republican primary, and no one credible will be able to find space to Palin's right, and (3) she's still popular among her party.

    Huckabee was unable to raise money in the past because his grassroots support is thin and his feints at economic heresy destroyed his opportunities at corporate cash. Everyone else on the current ballot is going to be playing the moderate to Palin's base-conservative.

    I think the most likely situation, other than Palin getting the nomination, is someone not under consideration right now getting the nod. Marco Rubio is my pick in that scenario, for what that's worth.

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