2012 Polls: Romney Beats Palin in Her Own Alaska, Wallops Pawlenty in His Native Minnesota
Interesting info leaks today from two polling sources, both – incredibly – showing Mitt Romney ahead of potential 2012 rivals in their home states.
In Alaska, Mitt Romney edges Sarah Palin by 3%.
From PPP:
Mitt Romney vs. Sarah Palin
If Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012 she can’t count on a whole lot of support back home. 62% of Alaska Republicans are opposed to her making a White House bid and she gets only 17% in a hypothetical 2012 primary in the state tying for her second with Mike Huckabee behind Mitt Romney.
It’s not that Alaska Republicans don’t like Palin- a majority of them still do. But there’s a significant disconnect between GOP voters in the state liking Palin and thinking she should run for President, a divide we’ve seen with Republicans nationally and one that presents the biggest threat to a possible Palin candidacy. Even among voters with a favorable opinion of Palin in the state just 39% think she should launch a 2012 bid.
Romney gets 20% to 17% for Palin and Huckabee, 16% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul.
In Minnesota, Mitt Romney pummels Tim Pawlenty by 13%.
From MPR:
Mitt Romney vs. Tim Pawlenty
The poll also compared Pawlenty the two most prominent, presumed front-runners for the Republicans in 2012 — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Romney fared better than Pawlenty with likely Minnesota voters, 45 percent to 32 percent, while Pawlenty easily beat Palin in the hypothetical matchup, 59 percent to 24 percent.
*It’s worth noting that this last poll was extracted from all likely voters, Republicans & Democrats alike.
Any thoughts on these results? Could these be accurate depictions of the primary to come? Is it possible that anyone could swipe a victory from Mitt in his native Michigan?
~Aaron G.
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I don’t know how much I would rely on a Daily Kos pollster. Alaska is notoriously difficult to poll.
Via C4P:
The Daily Kos pollster, Public Policy Polling (D), just released a poll about Governor Palin’s standing in Alaska. I’ll ask the same question that I asked the other day: why would anyone take this pollster seriously considering that it was hilariously wrong about the Senate primary?
What PPP(D) won’t tell you is that it had previously effectively labeled Murkowski a lock because she was allegedly just as popular with Republicans as Palin. Here is what PPP(D) wrote several months ago when it conducted its last Alaska poll:
PPP: Folks who don’t pay a lot of attention to Alaska polling numbers might assume that Sarah Palin is by far the most popular Republican in the state and that Lisa Murkowski could be seriously affected by Palin’s endorsement of her primary opponent…but that’s not true. Murkowski’s 77/13 approval with Republican voters is almost identical to Palin’s 78/15 favorability. Because of that Murkowski won’t likely see much negative effect from Palin’s action. And for what it’s worth when you get beyond the GOP base in Alaska Murkowski is much more popular than Palin- a 52/36 approval spread compared to the former Governor’s 47/45 favorability.
C4P: Well, we all know that assessment from PPP(D) turned out to be comically wrong as Murkowski conceded to Miller last night.
In any event, I think a broader point needs to be made about how and why pollsters are screwing up so badly when it comes to polling Palin and Alaska. Pollsters have tried to claim that they weren’t really wrong when they showed Murkowski incredibly popular among Republicans and ahead of Miller by 30 points because Miller somehow surged into the lead the final two weeks because of a couple of ads from the Tea Party Express. That theory was effectively nipped in the bud by Miller’s performance among the absentee ballots. If the pollsters were correct that Miller destroyed a 30-point lead in the last two weeks, wouldn’t Murkowski have won the absentee ballots by a huge margin considering that some of the absentees must have come before Miller made this purported 30-point surge in the last two weeks? In reality, the absentee ballots effectively broke evenly between Miller and Murkowski, suggesting that Murkowski never had what the pollsters claimed to be a 30-point lead over the West Point graduate and Bronze Star recipient. The most reasonable explanation is that pollsters have no clue when it comes to polling Alaska and specifically, they are clueless when it comes to polling Governor Palin in Alaska.
One answer is that these pollsters are total hacks. Another answer is that these pollsters are finding too many voters from Anchorage, Juneau, and rural Alaska while polling too few voters in Fairbanks, Kenai/Kodiak, and the Mat-Su Valley, one of the fastest growing areas in the country. A sample that is comprised of too many voters from Anchorage is going to find too many center-left voters than there actually are and that will skew the results against Palin as center-left voters are not fans of hers. Typically, patriotic people in the United States military tend to be strong supporters of people like Governor Palin and Joe Miller.
The reason why the RT Nielson poll was closer than any other poll in gauging the Alaska Senate primary was because it nailed the geographical composition of the electorate. It didn’t poll too many voters from Anchorage as it determined that 35% of the electorate would be from Anchorage and that’s basically what the percentage of the vote was from Anchorage in the real Senate primary. RT Nielson also concluded that 19% of the vote would come from the Mat-Su Valley area. A little over 20% of the votes cast in the real Alaska senate primary did come from the Valley.
Why would any reasonable person consider PPP(D) more credible than the RT Nielson poll when the latter showed Miller closing on Murkowski and the former claimed Murkowski was a lock? The RT Nielson poll tells the story about the Alaska Senate race. Governor Palin’s “strongly favorable” rating exceeded Murkowski’s “strongly favorable” rating by a huge margin. All Miller needed to win was win everyone who had a “strongly favorable” opinion of Palin and he’d be close to victory. Winning those voters who had a “strongly favorable” opinion of Palin provided him 84% of his total vote.
Boy jimr3, you have the biggest case of sour grapes I have seen around here. C4P offers you comfort i suppose. But time will come for you to face facts about the former AK governor’s lack of popularity in her home state. It happens.
Its not the end of the world. She still may be popular among the Fox News viewers and that may be enough for now. The election is years away and she may never run anyway. Its way to early for you to take this so hard. So either chin up or consider alternative.
Mitt is a Papa Grizzly!
I said it in 2006/07 and I’ll say it again. NOBODY is going to beat Mitt in Michigan. I live in Michigan and my perspective leads me to conclude that Mitt will win Michigan in both the primary and general election should he run for President in 2012.
@Rebel Ross
Go Mitt!!!
I’ve been saying it since the day Romney dropped out of the 2008 Primary: He’s going to mop the floor with everyone, Obama included, in 2012.
He’s got enormous leads in all the primary states that matter: New Hampshire, Michigan, Florida, California. When he wins these states, the primary will be over.
Mitt will be the uniter that Pres Obama purported to be.
I was ready to vote for Mitt in the general (I’m non-partisan), and was disappointed when he dropped out. I agree with another commenter – he’s going to mop the floor with everyone in 2012.