Biggest poll news of the last few days is this national Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters showing Perry vaulting pass Romney:
- Rick Perry 29%
- Mitt Romney 18%
- Michele Bachmann 13%
- Ron Paul 9%
- Herman Cain 6%
- Newt Gingrich 5%
- Rick Santorum 1%
- Jon Huntsman 1%
- Thaddeus McCotter 0%
- Undecided 16% [9%]
Pretty damn surprising BUT he just got into the race. Will these numbers hold up once the left and the MSM aim their cannons at him daily as they did to Palin and Bachmann? We shall see.
Perry captures 39% of the vote among GOP primary voters who say they are members of the Tea Party, with Bachmann a distant second with 21% support from this group. Perry barely leads Romney among non-Tea Party members 27% to 24%, but this marks a interesting change from the previous survey when Romney held a double-digit lead over Perry among these voters.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of primary voters hold a favorable opinion of Perry, with 38% Very Favorable. Bachmann is viewed favorably by 71%, with 32% who share a Very Favorable regard for her.
Romney has slightly higher overall favorable rating – 77% – than Perry and Bachmann, but there’s less enthusiasm in his support. Only 21% hold a Very Favorable opinion of him.
Roughly one-in-five hold an unfavorable view of the three front-runners.
Paul, who emerged as a Cinderella of sorts from the Saturday straw poll, is viewed favorably by 43% and unfavorably by 45%. Gingrich is in a similar position with favorables of 48% and unfavorables of 43%.
For Cain, Santorum, Huntsman and McCotter, name recognition is still a problem, with at least one-in-four primary voters still not aware of them enough to venture any kind of opinion.
It’s still very early, not a whole lot of people are paying attention except for us political junkies, and as Rove said, there might be a few more candidates throwing their hats into the ring….lots will change over the next few months I’m sure.
Now, moving away from the national to some regional polls like this Ohio poll done by PPP of 792 voters. Check out their sample…44% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 22% Independents.
Yeeeaaaah. Should I even put up the numbers?
Anyways:
- Barack Obama 48%
- Michele Bachmann 41%
- Barack Obama 45%
- Rick Perry 41%
- Barack Obama 45%
- Mitt Romney 43%
- Barack Obama 47%
- Herman Cain 39%
Among Independents
- Barack Obama 45%
- Michele Bachmann 37%
- Mitt Romney 43%
- Barack Obama 38%
- Barack Obama 40%
- Herman Cain 38%
- Rick Perry 40%
- Barack Obama 35%
And lastly check out these two polls and tell me what’s weird:
- Rick Perry 20%
- Mitt Romney 20%
- Michele Bachmann 12%
- Ron Paul 8%
- Herman Cain 7%
- Newt Gingrich 6%
- Tim Pawlenty 3%
- Jon Huntsman 2%
- Someone else/Undecided 11%
And North Carolina
- Rick Perry 17%
- Mitt Romney 17%
- Herman Cain 11%
- Newt Gingrich 10%
- Michele Bachmann 9%
- Ron Paul 7%
- Tim Pawlenty 2%
- Jon Huntsman 1%
- Someone else/Undecided 9%
Perry has tied Romney in Colorado! And Romney has tied Perry in North Carolina!
Twilight zone time.
Granted, these were conducted last week prior to the Ames poll so the numbers will have changed already, with Bachmann gaining ground, but still plenty weird.
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I don’t think that Perry is electable. I think that Romney would win going away. I think that Romney might have defeated Bachmann, but I think that Perry will be the Tea Party favorite, and I just can’t see Romney defeating him.
The following is simply a joke; don’t go ballistic on me. Funniest thing I’ve read regarding Perry is that he’s George W Bush without the ethics or intelligence.
– Larry W/HB
I think Perry will indeed become the Republican nominee.
For the record, I was a Mitch Daniels supporter.
But I think the clincher will be who Perry chooses as a running-mate.
I pray for Perry to choose Marco Rubio.
I also think that the defining moment in this campaign will be the televised debates.
I think Perry can wipe the floor with Obama. Especially if nobody leaks the questions to Obama.
But the real show would be Marco Rubio laying waste to “Chuckles” Biden in the VP debate.
I can’t see Obama keeping that nit-wit on as his running-mate. But I sure hope he does!
@Nostradamus:
I don’t know, Nostradamus.
Running mates are usually picked to deliver parts of the nation the main candidate is weak in.
So two Southerners seems unlikely.
But they would make a nice team.
Now, who else?
Preferably from the North or Northeast.
Where’s Paul Ryan from?
I would like to see polls about how each of the GOP folks do against the Hildabeast instead of “O”. Personally, I give him no better than a 50/50 chance of being allowed to run again by the Clinton crime syndicate.
I think that the complete results of the Wisconsin recall elections are instructive. Along with recent polling.
There were 6 GOP seats at risk and 3 Dem seats. Dems (targeted for recall because they left the state and camped out in Chicago) all won. 2 of 6 GOP lost. In one of the 4 GOP retentions, a district which had been solidly GOP forever, the margin was very much closer than it had ever been. The final outcome left the Wisconsin Senate 17 Republicans and 16 Democrats. This is nominally GOP control, but one of these Republican state senators voted against de-unionizing the teachers and is currently touring the state with a Democratic colleague, promoting bipartisanship.
The Wisconsin Governor has announced that he won’t try to get any legislation passed unless he can secure 20 votes (i.e. the “RINO” and 3 Democrats). His takeaway message is that the voters of his state want to see bipartisan compromise.
This reflects a national trend, where a long series of polls found solid majorities favoring the so-called “balanced” approach to debt reduction, including a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.
Then, there is the 14% approval rating (lowest ever) for Congress. The country is disgusted with the hyper-partisan rancor. After all the debt battle dust settled, both parties took a hit, but the GOP took the bigger hit, with a reversal in the generic congressional preference poll (had previously favored the GOP; now favors the Dems).
What’s also interesting are Obama’s head to head polls with individual GOP candidates. At a time when he’s taken an enormous beating (some of it well deserved) from both Right and Left, and at a time when virtually everyone says the country is going in the “wrong direction,” and when the economy is in the doldrums, and when the stock market is meandering South, and when unemployment isn’t budging, and when gas prices are still high, Obama still leads all of his challengers.
I don’t think that Perry’s blunt divisiveness is going to play well, in the present climate. He’s got a book out, also, where he slams both Social Security and Medicare. This will no doubt endear him to certain circles of the conservative electorate, but it’s not a roadmap for success at the national level. Stuff like this is why Karl Rove is frankly horrified.
Romney is doing a much better job this time around than in 2008. He’s staying away from the strident social conservative stuff (which came across as insincere) and he’s not even running away from RomneyCare. He’s coming across as who he really is: an experienced and successful businessman, who succeeded as Governor of the bluest state in the Union. The Republicans have a winner in Romney. He’ll appoint conservative judges. He would do so much good for the GOP, if only the GOP were to give him the chance.
But, no. Perry announces and he immediately shoots up to the top. The conservative base will just love this guy to death, but they’ll love him all the way to blowing a sure thing for the Presidency, if they follow their hearts, rather than their heads.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Here’s some interesting data about the Texas economic miracle. The author is a liberal economist, but what’s important are not his opinions, but, rather, the data he cites:
I really do think that this guy is a loser for the GOP. He’s all hat and no cattle.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
When you have more of your population under age 18 than anywhere else, as Texas does, you are still expanding schools, hiring teachers, building hospitals, jails and so on.
Children (under Obama) require a whole lot of ”village” to raise them.
Much of this is mandated.
We in CA tried to get the nation to pay a fair share for the educating, medicating, hospitalizing, arresting and jailing of all of the illegals who needed these things back in the 1980’s.
But we were turned down flat.
Texas got their help, under Obama’s so-called stimulus plan.
Regulation by Obama is also causing a lot of hiring of gov’t workers.
Obama would LOVE to stop the economic engine that is Texas in its tracks…….
Just today Obama put another roadblock to oil shale production in Colorado:
THREE FLOWERS are more important than jobs or inexpensive energy.
Hi, Nan (#7): My point was that the so-called Texas economic miracle isn’t based on private sector growth; it’s based on government growth. Perry’s been bragging that Texas added 37% of the nation’s new jobs. He doesn’t say that Texas added 47% of the nation’s new government jobs, and that Texas actually lost private sector jobs. He also doesn’t talk about Texas having the greatest number of workers receiving minimum wage and the highest percentage of medically uninsured citizens. He also doesn’t talk about how both New York and Massachusetts have lower unemployment rates than Texas, with Massachusetts having close to 100% of its citizens with health insurance (thanks largely to Mitt Romney).
Perry has tough talk and swagger, but, in the absence of actual achievements, it’s entirely the wrong tone for the present political climate, at the national level. He could get away with it, perhaps, if he could actually back it up, but when you take a closer look at the numbers, you see that whatever success Texas has had is largely owing to the growth of government jobs and not to private sector jobs. As Perry is currently trying to run on his record as a job creator, he’s going to be called out on it. Just imagine the attack ads which will challenge his assertions. They aren’t hard to imagine.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim, #6:
An interesting article. I knew Perry had covered 97% of the state’s budget shortfall using stimulus fund money, but the fact that the state’s only net job gains were in the public sector comes as a complete surprise. I assumed it had been a matter of adding a lot of new low-paying service jobs.