{"id":307914,"date":"2010-02-11T14:49:18","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T19:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=76429"},"modified":"2010-02-11T14:49:18","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T19:49:18","slug":"will-palin-enter-the-ranks-of-former-vp-candidates-who-flamed-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/307914","title":{"rendered":"Will Palin Enter the Ranks of Former VP Candidates Who Flamed Out?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big news from today’s Gallup Poll<\/a> is President Obama’s weak 44-42 lead over a generic Republican 2012 candidate. It’s the kind of support that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had before they went on to struggle in midterms and win re-election, but it’s clearly bad for Democrats.<\/p>\n

Still, I’m more interested — in our current moment of Palin hype — by the numbers for actual Republican candidates. <\/span>The open-ended Gallup survey (that is, they didn’t prompt anyone for names) found Mitt Romney the most-mentioned possible 2012 candidate at 14 percent, with Palin at 11 percent. But in the last month, we’ve seen polls paid for by conservative (Newsmax<\/a>) and liberal (Daily Kos<\/a>) organizations that found Palin doing not a whole lot better in the GOP field. The January Newsmax\/Zogby poll found Palin at 22.2 percent to Romney’s 19.4 percent. A Research 2000\/Daily Kos poll found Palin at 16 percent to Romney’s 11 percent.<\/p>\n

We’ve got more frequent polling now than at any point in American political history, but we have a few data points to compare this to, vis-a-vis past presidential races. (Thanks to TWI’s Rachel Hartman for digging this up.)<\/p>\n

A July 2002 ABC News\/Washington Post poll of Democrats found that former Vice President Al Gore was the clear frontrunner, but asked who’d be in front if Gore passed on the race. The top vote-getter: 2000 veep nominee Joe Lieberman with 21 percent, Tom Daschle with 14 percent, Dick Gephardt with 13 percent and eventual nominee John Kerry with 10 percent.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, there weren’t many trial heats in early 2006 — and all found Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead — but a USA Today\/Gallup poll<\/a> taken four years ago today found 2004 veep nominee bunched up with Gore and Kerry for second place, at 12 percent. A December 2005 poll that excluded Gore had Edwards and Kerry at 14 percent.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, in both of those cases, the parties had clear frontrunners. That July 2002 poll had Gore at 46 percent. Those December 2005 and February 2006 polls had Clinton at 43 percent and 39 percent, respectively.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Is Palin a top 2012 prospect if she runs? Sure, and it’s not clear whether an announcement would push her numbers up or not. But she’s clearly closer to the place that eventual losers Joe Lieberman and John Edwards were — boosted by name recognition — than to the frontrunner status of candidates like Clinton or Gore. Yes, neither of them won the nomination, but it’s still amazing that Palin, with roughly a third or a half the support among her own base that Clinton and Gore had, is uniquely treated as their standard-bearer.
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The big news from today’s Gallup Poll is President Obama’s weak 44-42 lead over a generic Republican 2012 candidate. It’s the kind of support that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan had before they went on to struggle in midterms and win re-election, but it’s clearly bad for Democrats. Still, I’m more interested — in our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}