Early 2012 Polling
Gallup takes an early look at potential Republican contenders for 2012. Mike Huckabee, who doesn’t get the press coverage of a Sarah Palin, seems to be in the best shape:
As general election contenders, however, this crew all seems to be in bad shape:
Of course what looking at these polls doesn’t tell you is whether the answers to these questions this far out have any real predictive value. My guess would be that the answer is no, and that if Huckabee became the Republican nominee and the economy continues to be in bad shape that he’d win notwithstanding the tendency of a majority of Americans to say they wouldn’t even consider voting for him. That said, this definitely does underscore the basic fact that much as the conservative base may love Sarah Palin, the broader public hates her. Maybe—maybe—a Palin nomination would break the rule that the fundamentals matter most to presidential election outcomes.
37 Responses to “Early 2012 Polling”
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November 5th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I suspect that 2012 will be like 1936. Even though unemployment may still be relatively high, Obama will win re-election fairly easily regardless of who the Republicans nominate (assuming there are no foreign policy fiascos on Obama’s part and the GOP doesn’t totally go against the direction it has been heading for the last decade and nominate somebody like Colin Powell).
November 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Remember how “Barak Obama” polled before he became an actual candidate?
Mike Huckabee is their best shot. He’d have a fairly decent shot at winning. He comes off really well on TV, and he is really, really good at pretending to care about people. He also, unlike Obama, will be better at appearing to be a normal person because he’s more comfortable when not in a suit than Obama usually appears to be.
This poll looks like it’s mostly about name recognition (with the exception of Palin, which may well be a more accurate number). I seriously doubt Haley Barbour would only pull 15%, let alone having only 15% of the public actually consider voting for him.
If Obama wants to win, he needs to improve employment for real. It’s starting to look really fishy having that number hover under 10% when there hasn’t really been a pick-up in hiring. If he doesn’t see some real job growth in his term, he’s probably fucked even if they do nominate Sarah Palin.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
If Huckabee were to win the nomination, he’d be toast. Of these names, the only one with much of any hope for anything is Pawlenty.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Exactly. This poll is certainly not meaningful for Republicans without a national reputation – Pawlenty and Barbour.
It does show, though, that Sarah Palin would be a historically awful presidential candidate.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Last time Rush and Club for Growth came out pretty heavily against Huckabee as unelectable, which killed him New Hampshire.
Huckabee is also pretty vulnerable on some of the stuff he’s said over the years. Preaches tend to say a lot of things…
November 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Disagree. You get a bad enough economy, anyone can win. I think Dennis Kucinich would be president right now if he’d secured the 2008 nomination.
The issue for Huckabee is that he doesn’t appear to have a road to the nomination – he has very little R support outside of evangelicals, and he would need a badly split electorate to squeak through to the nomination.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Wait, does this really mean that 78% of national adults know who Tim Pawlenty is? That seems extremely doubtful.
It looks to me like this is just a poll of name recognition.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
What is the difference between the two charts? Is the first one only Republican respondents?
November 5th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Just think: “President Mike Huckabee.” *SHUDDER*
November 5th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
The issue for Huckabee is that he doesn’t appear to have a road to the nomination
Well that was my point. A GOP that nominates Huckabee won’t be strong enough to win the general election, unless things are so bad it won’t even matter who’s president.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
That can’t be right given Palin’s numbers. It looks like the normal position for a nationally known Republican is about 40-50. The normal position for a hilariously unpopular nationally known republican is about 30-60. That difference is real.
The Pawlenty and Barbour numbers can be safely ignored.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I seriously doubt Haley Barbour would only pull 15%, let alone having only 15% of the public actually consider voting for him.
Right. Virtually any Republican or Democrat is going to get a minimum of 45% of the vote in a presidential election. Well, maybe not Palin, but you get the point.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
If Obama keeps sucking up to Wall Street a populist like Huckabee might stand a chance. I would think that a big business candidate like Romney would have no shot in the current environment.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
To clarify: they really should have had a “don’t know enough about this person/no opinion” option to go with the other two. My guess is for Pawlenty and Barbour that would be above 50 for all adults.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
It’s basically a name recognition poll, though I think it makes the point that the GOPpers who have a degree of name-recog and don’t already repulse the general electorate are ones that the ‘baggers and their corporate underwriters don’t like.
(I’d like to know on what planet Haley Barbour thinks he’s a serious contender. A southern governor and corporate lobby-king with a history of shilling for Big Tobacco? Really?)
November 5th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Why even bother covering this nonsense? This poll has no predictive value for the 2012 elections and nothing to do with current events. You might as well be discussing entertainment news. Which Hollywood star will be the next to die? I beleive I read that on the cover of a tabloid the last time I was in the supermarket. Now that’s something worth discussing.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I see almost no path to a Republican victory in 2012. If there is a double-dip recession, or massive inflation, or a war in the middle east then the Republican challenger may at least be a credible threat. But short of that? It is extremely difficult for a president to lose re-election.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Note that “war in the middle east” is not the piddling little conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan between a super-power and people that can barely afford guns. I’m talking a balls-out war involving airstrikes in Iran or something.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
It’s basically a name recognition poll, though I think it makes the point that the GOPpers who have a degree of name-recog and don’t already repulse the general electorate are ones that the ‘baggers and their corporate underwriters don’t like.
It can’t be good news for them that they’re all above 50% from a “no, I won’t consider them” standpoint. That suggests to me that the path to victory for any of them would be very narrow (and may perhaps require a Naderite contribution to bring victory threshold below 50%). Still, too early to be making any predictions, but that’s ugly.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I think Palin is the best bet to be the nominee. Her schtick works better nationwide than Huckabee’s Southern preacher bit. She’ll have gobs of internet money from small donors. She’ll be able to play the sexism card against all the boys in the race.
It’s not like rational attacks are going to diminish her with her supporters either. I’d say 2/3 of Republicans are going to look favorably on Sarah Palin if she kills Bambi on live TV. The same can’t be said for Romney or Huckabee. Palin will destroy Romney for his Massachusetts flip-flops and in the age of HDTV, she’s going to destroy Huckabee with her sparkle on screen.
Then Obama will roll in the general election, maybe giving back North Carolina but that’s about it.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Ignore the mighty Sarah at your peril! Running for president in 2012 doesn’t mean she would be doing the “normal” political thing and trying to ‘win’. How well has the old, tired politics of winning worked in the past? Did it work for the Holy Roman Empire? Did it work for William of Orange? Rather, this would position her to, for instance, start a think tank devoted to Sarah-think. And then, when real guncarrying American finally revolt, she can be carried on their shoulders into D.C., where they’d clean out the Gandarene swine, and become our first queen.
In the meantime – we will enjoy the sight of Republican politicos dancing around debating Sarah, trying not to alienate her adoring fans. This will be more fun than watching dead fish float downstream.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Palin 2012 is like Rudy 2008 – she’s famous but you can tell (even at this point, years away) that she will not be a factor in the election, unless it’s as a fundraiser for someone else.
From my point of view, one of the weirdest events of the 2008 primary season was the far right’s decision that Huckabee was an unacceptable candidate. To the extent that they liked anyone besides the comatose non-starter Fred Thompson, it seemed like Romney of all people was really their guy (remember the uproar at his withdrawal speech at CPAC?).
The right seemed to oppose Huckabee because he cultivated an impression that he was an economic populist. The problem was that that image was transparently bogus – he supported a regressive restructuring of the tax code and I never heard him actually propose anything that would help poor people. I would hope that this foolishness continues and Rush & co. maintain that Huckabee is some kind of closet socialist next time around, but my bet is that they wise up and see that he’s as good as they’re going to do.
Which is a shame, because nothing would make me happier than Mittens in a general election. Please, please never let him retire from politics.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I agree the common lack of trust in Huckabee among many key GOP subgroups was an odd event, but I’m not sure it is possible to come back from that position in today’s GOP. I guess we will find out.
By the way, on this:
My guess would be that the answer is no, and that if Huckabee became the Republican nominee and the economy continues to be in bad shape that he’d win notwithstanding the tendency of a majority of Americans to say they wouldn’t even consider voting for him.
I agree with Ron E. about the 1936 parallel. Basically, I don’t think the economy has to be good in 2012, it just has to seem like it is definitely getting better. At that point, I think the ridiculously bad Republican brand–as evidenced by this poll and many others–takes over and their nominee likely loses.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
We’ll see how attractive they look after the Primary season has rolled around. McCain was their best bet on 08, but he’d crippled himself by tacking so far to the right to win the primary. In the current environment, they’re still going to be forcing each-other to the right.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I don’t see any of these jokers out-campaigning Obama, bad economy or no. I don’t think he could pull together a majority coalition in the belief that he would somehow be able to rescue the economy, he quite demonstrably has little knowledge about these things. I don’t think things will be as bad in 2012 as they are now, either, so I don’t see it mattering as much.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Doing things like making sure that Goldman Sachs get’s vaccines long before anyone else does sure as hell isn’t going to help Obama.
If that ends up being true, there’s absolutely nothing Obama could do to get me to vote for him. Even Sarah Palin is better than a Democratic party that looks at citizens as serfs and Goldman Sachs as gods on this earth.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
And, now Obama plans to do away with the internet. I’m pretty sure at this point that Obama will be the last Democratic President ever.
What are you going to do when everyone alive right now refuses to vote for you because you thought making mickey mouse happy was so important you had to murder the internet? The youth vote won’t ever vote for you after that. I doubt much of anyone will.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
“Doing things like making sure that Goldman Sachs get’s vaccines long before anyone else does sure as hell isn’t going to help Obama. If that ends up being true, there’s absolutely nothing Obama could do to get me to vote for him.”
Oh for heaven’s sake, soullite, who do you think you’re fooling? You’ve been crowing since November 5, 2008 that Obama is a despicable sellout who’s the same as Bush and that he’s stabbed his supporters in the back. Now you’re trying to cast yourself as an undecided voter? Just go ahead and vote for LaRouche already, no one cares.
Also, I love “if that ends up being true.” Why wait to determine that? The prospect of it being true is just so delicious, it’d be a shame for you to miss a chance to register your outrage if—perish the thought!—it ended up being untrue.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Three reasons to like Mike Huckabee:
1) He didn’t join in the pile on during the Rev. Wright episode. Instead, he defended Wright, saying this:
“As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement!’ … I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names…”
He acknowledges the reality of pervasive racism in America, including racism in his own upbringing. That’s unusual for any American politician, let alone a Republican.
2) Endorsed by both Chuck Norris and Stephen Colbert. He’s not faux-folksy — he’s genuinely funny.
3) In general, he seems to be the least dishonest candidate the Republicans have at the moment. He’s quite open about his theocratic agenda.
If you had to elect a candidate from the Republican madhouse, Huckabee’s the best option you have.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
the GOPpers who have a degree of name-recog and don’t already repulse the general electorate are ones that the ‘baggers and their corporate underwriters don’t like
That’s inevitable. Wingers don’t like anyone except wingers, and the more the public finds out about a winger, the more they dislike him/her.
And with the Daily Show and YouTube, you can’t say different things to different audiences and get away with it anymore.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Rudy 2008 was a secular urban candidate who had trouble connecting with the GOP base. Palin 2012 will have no such problems.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Rudy 2008 was a secular urban candidate who had trouble connecting with the GOP base. Palin 2012 will have no such problems.
Of course Rudy had the whole 9iu11ani thing going for him, and Palin can’t even fake an interest in foreign and national security policy, but I generally agree she has a better shot than he did at the nomination, particularly in light of who is likely to bother to show up for the GOP primaries in 2012.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Huckabee is being pushed in the christian media.
You really can’t understand how Huckabee is winning these polls without understanding that there is an entire separate media apparatus that a significant portion of the country uses exclusively for their news, and that media apparatus has a strong, open, pro-Huckabee editorial stance.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
There are a lot of factors that Obama had going for him in ‘08 that he isn’t going to have in ‘12: the “let’s make history” factor, the “legacy fatigue” factor, and the “party out of power during a bad economy factor”, not to mention the “Lets repudiate Bush” factor. (The stink of an unpopular president doesn’t stick to parties very long: anti-Nixon sentiment only hurt Ford, not Reagan. Anti-Carter sentiment hurt Mondale, bu didn’t really affect Dukakis’ loss. Four years does a lot to repair damaged political brands all by itself.)
Of course, he will have the rather large advantage of incumbency that he didn’t have before
November 5th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
You know, some of you would be on much firmer ground if Obama’s re-elects could stay above 50% for more than 2 weeks in a row.
The honest truth is, Obama had a real chance at greatness because of this economic crisis. No matter what you think of his reelection or his administration, it really does have to be acknowledged that he fell short of that greatness due to his own timidity and conservative ideology.
If he HADN’T fallen short, this post wouldn’t even exist because we wouldn’t really care who they nominated because we would know that Obama could beat them handily.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I suspect 35% of respondents are mistaking Haley Barbour for Halle Berry.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
This is my first time on this blog. Disclaimer: I am a Republican. I’m not here to argue as it is foolishness to attempt to persuade someone in politics. I just wanted to comment on the clarity of thought and logical thinking I’m reading here.
A lot of you are saying what I’ve been trying to tell my Republican friends and they just won’t listen. Romney is a loser candidate allied with big business. People don’t trust candidates like that. I can see why you’d hope they nominate him. I told people in 2007/2008 that only McCain or Huckabee could win versus Obama. Romney was a sure loser. It turned out because of the economy that no Republican could win and no Democrat could lose, but if you remember before the economic collapse in September McCain was leading in the polls.
Palin is a sure loser. I don’t think she’ll be nominated. Even a lot of Republicans don’t like her. If she runs, she’ll get some votes, but probably drop out early on. Palin and Huckabee largely share the same base. Most of the grassroots is with Huckabee or Palin, while the “business” Republicans like Romney. Romney’s got maybe 25% of the Republican Party, not much more. He couldn’t even win Iowa despite outspending everyone else combined by a huge margin! He’s a very weak candidate with a lot of money.
Huckabee is a very strong candidate with limited resources. I think one of 2 things happens in 2012 with the GOP nomination. Either Sarah Palin and Huckabee split their support allowing Romney to take the nomination, then lose to Obama in November or Huckabee knocks Palin out of the race fairly early then battles with Romney and eventually beats Romney for the nomination. Who would win between Huckabee and Obama is unknown because it depends on conditions in 2012.