Friday, October 21, 2011

Thinking 2012

Current political news is dominated by the looney toons of the GOP debates and their aftermath. While I enjoy it as political theater and it gives me endless material to ridicule on ShrinkRap, it also gives us a skewed picture of the dominance of ultra-conservative thinking, since that is virtually all we hear from these candidates, each trying to find some way to out-pander the next guy. Only Romney and Huntsman have kept one foot in more moderate views

The American people perhaps have a better perspective. An AP-GfK poll taken 10/13 to 10/17 (prior to the last debate) shows these results:

In a match-up with the three top contenders, Obama comes out ahead of each:
+3% . . . Obama . . 48%. . . . Romney . 45%
+9% . . . Obama . . 51%. . . . Perry . . . 42%
+6% . . . Obama . . 49%. . . . Cain . . . .43%
Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings:
+12% Barack Obama: 54 / 44
+12% Mitt Romney: 49 / 37
+9% Herman Cain: 43/32
+3% Ron Paul: 38 / 35
-6% Rick Perry: 38 / 44
-6% Jon Huntsman: 22 / 28
-7% Rick Santorum: 25 / 32
-11% Michele Bachmann: 35 / 44
-16% Newt Gingrich: 35 / 51
-26% Sarah Palin: 35 / 61
Among the Republicans, only Romney, Cain and Paul have a positive favorable-minus-unfavorable score, Romney looks pretty good matching Obama at 12%. Cain looks good at the moment, but so far he's getting by with catchy slogans and no details. Paul gets the only other positive score. His appeal is to the libertarians, but there aren't enough of them and he can't expand his base.

Among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, the rankings for the nomination are:
30% Romney
26% Cain
13% Perry
8% Paul
7% Gingrich
4% Bachmann
2% Huntsman
2% Santorum
And Romney does have the best match-up score against Obama. But the electorate isn't really weighing the choice between those two yet.

I take this as hopeful. Obama is likely to improve as he combats the negative rhetoric they have been spewing out since the 2010 election.

For the one scenario that might defeat Obama (besides an increase in joblessness or a terrorist attack), check out my comment to this post.

Ralph
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2 comments:

  1. RalphOctober 21, 2011 at 11:51 AM

    On the other hand, there is one move the GOP could make that might be difficult for Obama to overcome: a ticket with Romney at the top and Marco Rubio as VP candidate.

    Rubio is a Tea Party backed Hispanic senator rom Florida, one of the key electoral states that may be up for grabs. Only he is likely to bring in the Hispanic vote to the GOP.

    He's also movie-star handsome, can deliver the fiery, populist rhetoric that doesn't come easily for Romney, and he has the charisma that Romney lacks and won't ever find.

    He would also help counter Romney's flip-flop image, with Rubio being the resolute, staunch Tea Party darling.

    The only hitch right now seems to be that the birthers are saying he's ineligible: he was born in a Miami hospital, but his parents didn't become citizens of the U.S. until after his birth. That, of course, is a matter of interpretation of the Constitution, which doesn't define "natural born citizen."

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  2. RalphOctober 21, 2011 at 8:48 PM

    For anyone who likes poll stats, here are some more:

    In the five early voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida, Perry's support has dropped on average from 25% to 8% over the last six weeks.

    Iowa 21% down to 7%
    New Hampshire 18% down t0 2%
    South Carolina 36% down to 11%
    Nevada 29% down to 12%
    Florida 21% down to 10%

    Bad news for Perry.
    Nevada

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