2012

This is a surprising result from Public Policy Polling, the occasionally partisan group which nonetheless called the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races accurately. Mitt Romney’s favorable rating among Republican voters has fallen to 48 percent–a plurality, but a weak one. And the trend lines are even more interesting. Since April, when PPP started asking [...]

Brian Frederick’s debunking of Andrew Malcolm’s claim that “the approval gap between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin is shrinking” is well done, although Malcolm’s much-linked argument has probably gotten too far around the Web to be really demolished. Frederick’s main point, however, is solid. Public figures have “favorable” ratings; they also have “approval” ratings. The [...]

Alex Burns does the work of talking to third party organizers to see if any would get behind a presidential candidacy from former CNN host Lou Dobbs, who floated the idea yesterday on former Sen. Fred Thompson’s (R-Tenn.) radio show. Bay Buchanan says yes; no surprise there. Dean Barkley, a shallow independent candidate from Minnesota, [...]

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