The prevailing view in the mainstream media is that Sarah Palin doesn’t have a prayer of luring female voters for Hillary Clinton to the John McCain-Palin ticket. Gerald Seib disputed this notion in his excellent column in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday. And the numbers in the latest Journal/NBC News poll suggest Palin may indeed have fertile ground to plow in Hillaryland. The poll found that 11 percent of the electorate would vote for Hillary but not Barack Obama, who defeated her for the Democratic presidential nomination. Assuming roughly 120 million voters (as in 2004) and doing some simple math, the Hillary-only bloc consists of 13.2 million voters. Sixty percent of these voters are women. That’s 7.9 million voters, a chunk of the electorate large enough to swing a close election. That’s not all. Of the 13.2 million voters, half said they have a negative view of Obama, which explains why they won’t vote for him. That’s 6.6 million voters. And 65 percent identified their ideology as moderate or conservative. That’s 8.6 million voters. There’s obviously a bit of overlap in these numbers. And some of the Hillary partisans may already have decided to vote for McCain. Some may be Republicans. Nonetheless, taking all the numbers into account, you come to an inescapable conclusion: There’s an opportunity for Palin to make headway in Hillary’s camp. There are millions of Hillaryites up for grabs. And Palin will no doubt make a pitch for them when she addresses the Republican convention and a national TV audience Wednesday night.
