The results are so strange that PPP’s Tom Jensen doesn’t have a theory. One possible explanation, though, is how health care has dominated the national political debate since early summer. It the spring, Romney bounced as high as 67 percent. The summer and fall have taken a toll on him. As Andy Barr astutely pointed out in September, Romney has been hamstrung by his health care record. As governor of Massachusetts, he compromised with Democrats and signed a mandate-driven health care bill, and ever since then Republicans have used that against him.

Inside the beltway, Romney is seen as a classic front-runner who’s picked his issues wisely–he’s four months away from publishing a book on “American greatness”–and retained smart campaign staffers. But Huckabee is leading the field in national and Iowa polls, and Palin clearly has the biggest following of any possible 2012 candidate.

One example of how the divergence squeezes candidates came in 2000, when most voters approved of President Bill Clinton’s work, but most had an “unfavorable” view of his post-impeachment character. That flummoxed Al Gore’s campaign when it thought about how to handle Clinton. According to Gore campaign vets like Bob Shrum, Clinton was toxic in states that he’d won twice and where the economy was booming, like Iowa.

Since Sarah Palin doesn’t have a job outside of her book tour, her “favorable” rating is all she has. Not only is it lower than Barack Obama’s favorable rating, it’s lower than a credible national candidate can really stand — Republicans argued that Hillary Rodham Clinton might be unelectable as a presidential candidate when her “unfavorable” rating was a good 10 points lower than Palin’s.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Arizona voters finds Arpaio, famed for his crackdowns on illegal immigrants, leading Goddard, the state’s current attorney general, by 12 points – 51% to 39%. Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

According to the survey, Goddard leads Republican Gov. Jan Brewer by a comfortable nine-point margin, and Goddard is virtually tied with State Treasurer Dean Martin. Brewer is the only one of the possible candidates who is officially in the race.

With numbers like this, could Arpaio be enticed to run for governor? And could he win?

Rumors have been swirling in Arizona for the past few months that Arpaio is mulling a gubernatorial bid, fueled by his antipathy for Goddard. The 77-year-old Arpaio was first elected in 1992, and he won re-election in 2008 by a commanding 13-point margin, with 55 percent of the vote. During that race, Arpaio raised more than $600,000 — an eye-popping sum for a countywide election. Effectively a modern-day political boss, “Sheriff Joe” is well-known for his heavy-handed tactics to combat illegal immigration and bragging about the harsh conditions in county detention facilities. He has launched investigations of numerous political opponents, including Goddard, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the Phoenix New Times and the Maricopa County Superior Court.

While Arpaio remains extremely popular in Maricopa County — the home of Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe accounts for approximately 61 percent of Arizona’s population — Goddard has already proven himself in statewide races, having been elected attorney general in 2002, and re-elected in 2006 with 60 percent of the vote (pdf). A poll released last month by the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism and KAET found Arpaio had a 61 percent approval rating among Maricopa County voters, while the same survey found 55 percent of Arizona voters approve of Goddard’s performance. Arizona has been trending Democratic in recent years, but a Gallup poll from January found party identification in the state was essentially a dead heat, and one would be hard-pressed to find anybody in Arizona without a strong opinion about Arpaio.

All of this seems to confirm Rasmussen’s findings: If Arpaio got into the race against Goddard, he would stand a pretty good chance of winning. It’s also a safe bet that Arpaio would raise a lot of money from out-of-state illegal immigration opponents.

The Obama administration has already clashed with Arpaio on a couple of occasions. In March, the Justice Department announced it was opening an investigation into allegations of racial profiling and unlawful searches and seizures, and last month Arpaio was stripped of his authority to enforce federal immigration laws under the controversial 287(g) program.

But if the Justice Department thought Arpaio was a handful as sheriff of Maricopa County, just imagine what he could do with control of the state’s Department of Public Safety, and Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature.

(Via Eric Kleefeld)

This post has been updated.

It’s a surprising poll because only 24 percent of state Republicans have a negative view of McCain. He’s suffering from a backlash against everyone currently in Washington. And it’s been two years since McCain broke with the GOP base and backed comprehensive immigration reform. If that comes up again in 2010, as many expect it to, McCain could face real problems with Arizona voters.

Among Republicans… only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% — an outright majority — saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.

Again, I’m not surprised. When I covered the run-up to the 9/12 taxpayer march on Washington, I encountered multiple conservative activists who said ACORN–then in the news for the James O’Keefe/Hannah Giles sting videos–had stolen the election. From my story:

“Clinton only got elected in 1992 because Ross Perot got back in the race,” said Miller. He attributed Perot’s decision to pressure from the “Dixie mafia, Jimmy Carter’s organization — they ran half the South.” And according to Miller, Barack Obama had only won the 2008 election because of fraud by the community organizing group ACORN.

“You can assume 10 percent of Obama’s votes were fraudulent votes,” said Bench.

I’ve heard this all over the country, and there’s no basis for it whatsoever. Back in May, former Nevada GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden–now a candidate against Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)–told me that ACORN did not have an effect in her state, one of several where Republicans filed pre-election lawsuits against the group.

On Election Day, recalled Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden, the GOP watched the issue closely, alerted state officials to bogus registrations, and dispatched “trained people” to the polls to look for voters showing up to cast ballots under assumed names at fake addresses. None showed up. “Would it have made a difference?” asked Lowden. “No, none of our races were that close.”

The survey found 62 percent of voters say tax cuts will create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21 percent say spending can do that. This cuts against the long-standing economic theories that have guided the White House and Democrats since the beginning of the Obama administration. More good news for Republicans; 51 percent believe canceling the rest of the stimulus money would create more jobs, and only 32 percent — rather less than the Democrats’ base vote — want to keep spending it.

It’s one poll, but it’s only the latest to portray Palin as an unpopular — forget “divisive” — figure whose weakness with the general electorate has no bearing with her popularity among Republicans. And it cuts against the surreal arguments that Palin is in a good position to rebuild an image that was positive for, at most, about four weeks in 2008. Clinton’s 42 percent “definitely not” number was the kind of thing that encouraged Democrats like Barack Obama and John Edwards into the race against her. Palin’s 53 percent is just brutal.

On the eve of Election Day, Conservative Doug Hoffman has opened up a five point lead  over Democrat Bill Owens in the race for the 23rd Congressional District.  Republican Assembly member  Dede Scozzafava still gets six percent support, but since her decision to suspend her campaign and support  Owens, the number of undecided voters has doubled from nine percent to 18 percent, according to a new Siena (College) Research Institute poll of likely voters.

Besides trailing in the two latest polls — a new Public Policy Polling survey released last night found Hoffman with a commanding lead — Owens has another problem: Hoffman’s net favorability numbers increased dramatically since Scozzafava dropped out of the race, while Owens’ has dropped.

“Hoffman’s favorability rating shot up from a net positive four points to a now net positive 14 points – 47-33 percent,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenberg in a release accompanying the survey results.  “Owens’ favorability dropped slightly from a net positive four points to a net  negative one point.”