2012

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll sneaks a little bit of reality into the maelstrom of Sarah Palin news. Fifty-three percent of Americans would “definitely not” vote for Palin in a hypothetical 2012 presidential race. For comparison, when the Post asked this question about then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2006, only 42 percent said [...]

Eric Kleefeld points to a Rasmussen poll of Minnesota that has only 42 percent of voters in that state backing Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) in a possible presidential bid; 46 percent would oppose him.
This shouldn’t be surprising. In his two successful bids for governor, Pawlenty has received 46 percent and 47 percent of the vote. [...]

This Public Policy Polling survey of Maine isn’t all that surprising: She has a 46/40 disapproval/approval rating from state Republicans. By a whopping 27 points, those same Republicans say they’d back a “conservative challenger” to Snowe in the 2012 GOP primary. Voters who picked the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 and self-identified conservatives all oppose Snowe [...]

Ben Smith, Nick Gillespie, and Byron York are writing up Gallup’s report that Vice President Joe Biden’s favorable ratings have fallen below the 50 percent mark. Gillespie and York both point out that “Biden is less popular at this point in his term than Dick Cheney was in his.”
Now, not disputing that Biden’s [...]

“He’s a Republican gladiator, not a conservative,” said American Conservative Union chairman David Keene.

The former Congressional Budget Organization head and McCain campaign economic adviser shows up on the host committee for Tim Pawlenty’s “Pretzels and Pints” fundraiser, happening this Thursday in a bar near Washington’s Union Station.

The third annual “Value Voters Summit,” a conference sponsored by the Family Research Council and other leading Christian conservative groups, kicks off tomorrow in Washington. Organizers have just released the names that will appear on a 2012 presidential straw poll:
Newt Gingrich
Mike Huckabee
Bobby Jindal
Sarah Palin
Ron Paul
Tim Pawlenty
Mike Pence
Mitt Romney
Rick Santorum

Ron Faucheaux’s Clarus Research Group has a poll out testing two main things: independent voters’ take on President Obama and the relative strength of possible 2012 Republican candidates. On the first measure, 77 percent of independents say that the president is “eventually going to have to raise taxes,” 69 percent say he’s doing “too much [...]

Even as the president’s approval rating slips, Republicans looking to beat him in 2012 — one of their frontrunners, one-time governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, might be unelectable. A new Marist Poll gives President Obama a 56-33 lead over Palin among registered voters, with the president taking 20 percent of Republican voters and easily winning [...]

The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey points to a recent interview Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) gave to the conservative Website WorldNetDaily, in which Bachmann said she will only make a bid for president if God calls on her to run.
“If I felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do, I would do it,” she [...]