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Palin running even with Obama?
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
11/27/09 2:30 PM EST
It’s not too early, apparently, to test opinion on the 2012 presidential race. Pollster Scott Rasmussen has asked likely voters to decide between Barack Obama and three reasonably well-known Republicans, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. He also asked about their preferences in three-way pairings between those candidates and recently-resigned CNN commentator Lou Dobbs. There are three interesting findings.
Number one. Obama is essentially tied with all three Republicans, leading Huckabee 45%-41% and Palin 46%-43% and even with Romney at 44%-44%. In other words, Obama is running at his job approval ratinRg level, which Rasmussen has at 46%-54%. This is reminiscent of the 2004 general election, in which George W. Bush’s 51% of the vote mirrored his job approval numbers.
Number two. This is a vote, up or down, on Obama; it doesn’t make much difference who his Republican opponent is. He runs just about the same against Romney, whose favorable and unfavorable numbers are 49%-38% as he does against Huckabee (57%-30%) or Palin (46%-49%).
Number three. Dobbs takes many more votes from each of the Republicans than he does from Obama. Once again, this is basically an up-or-down vote on Obama. This is not like the appeal of Ross Perot in 1992, who took about equal numbers of votes from George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton (and some of whose supporters wouldn’t have voted if he had not been running).
I don’t think these numbers are anything like a reliable indicator of how the 2012 election cycle will unfold; they’re more like a referendum on Obama today, and not a particularly complimentary one. But it’s interesting that three Republican politicians, each with his or her own liabilities, are still running about even with Obama.
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