The collapse of Sarah Palin

The Washington Post is reporting that a new ABC/WP poll shows a major decline in Sarah Palin's favorability ratings. Her favorables have dropped from a peak of 58% after the GOP convention in September to 40% now, while her unfavorables have surged from a low of 28% to 53% now. Her 40/53 favorable-unfavorable ratio puts her into Hillary/Bush/Cheney territory as one of the most polarizing figures in American politics -- quite an achievement for someone who was a completely unknown less than a year ago.

It's almost impossible to imagine Palin getting the GOP nomination in 2012 at this point (though Intrade still puts the probability at 16%). With numbers like that, her general election prospects are dim, and the Post poll shows growing doubts about her among Republicans as well:

Republicans and GOP-leaning independents continue to rank Palin among the top three contenders in the run-up to 2012, however, with 70 percent of Republicans viewing her in a positive light in the new poll. But her support within the GOP has deteriorated from its pre-election levels, including a sharp drop in the number holding "strongly favorable" impressions of her.

And while Palin's most avid following is still among white evangelical Protestants, a core GOP constituency, and conservatives, far fewer in these groups have "strongly favorable" opinions of her than did so last fall.

...Perhaps more vexing for Palin's national political aspirations, however, is that 57 percent of Americans say she does not understand complex issues, while 37 percent think she does, a nine-percentage-point drop from a poll conducted in September just before her debate with now-Vice President Biden. The biggest decline on the question came among Republicans, nearly four in 10 of whom now say she does not understand complex issues. That figure is 70 percent among Democrats and 58 percent among independents.

Her favorability numbers also stack up extremely poorly against the rest of the expected 2012 field, as this graph illustrates:

The candidates are ordered left to right by their favorable-unfavorable ratio in the most recent poll on Pollingreport.com. As you can see, Palin's numbers are even worse than Newt Gingrich (!) -- the other highly polarizing candidate -- and she has less room to change her image because so many Americans already have an impression of her. By contrast, Romney, Huckabee, Jindal, and Pawlenty start the race without that sort of baggage and are therefore much more likely to make a serious run for the nomination.

To be sure, it's not impossible to come back from numbers like Palin's. Hillary Clinton overcame numbers that were nearly as bad and almost won the Democratic presidential nomination, but she did so with a great deal of hard work and discipline -- qualities that Palin appears to lack. Runner's World photo spreads, feuds with David Letterman, and useless policy op-eds are not going to turn her image around anytime soon.

(Cross-posted at Pollster.com)

Comments

[David]

The media spent a year trashing Palin. Now a poll now shows that they have succeeded. Brendan's cites show some of the ways that the media has successfully demonized her.

Palin didn't cause the feud with Letterman. He told by a mean-spirited joke -- a joke that never would have been told about a Democrat. Can you imagine Letterman joking about the statutory rape of Chelsea Clinton or Amy Carter when she was 14 years old? If he had done so, do you think that joke would have led to a feud? He might have lost his show.

Palin's "useless" article was actually well-written. Yglesias in effect praised it by comparisons to three leading op-ed writers: Charles Krauthammer, George Will, and Robert Samuelson. Samuelson, in particular, is not even a conservative. He's been a leading economic journalist for 30 years. He has won various awards and written three books. An article comparable to Samuelson must be very good indeed.

Palin's article would have been useful even if it had been badly written, since Congress is looking at passing a Cap and Trade bill. By calling the article "useless" rather than debate its points, the liberal media helps make Palin persona non grata.

[nascardaughter]

Hillary Clinton overcame numbers that were nearly as bad

I don't recall Clinton ever having anything close to a 13 point spread between favorable/unfavorable, with unfavorables winning...

[Truth Meter]

Brendan,

These two scientific polls conducted recently run against your conclusion:

Obama 48
Palin 42

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/toplines/pt_survey_toplines/july_2009/toplines_election_2012_july_18_19_2009

Before you toss out your "Rasmussen is in the tank" excuse, how do you explain PPP(D)?

Obama 51
Palin 43

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-continues-to-drop.html

"The numbers from this poll also seem to indicate that Sarah Palin did not do herself any immediate damage with her decision to resign as Governor of Alaska. Her favorability spread of 47/45 is the best PPP has found it over the course of six surveys conducted in the last four months. Also, her eight point deficit against Obama is the first time it's been in single digits over the course of these monthly 2012 polls. She also continues to have easily the highest percentage of GOP voters holding a positive opinion of her."

[David]

David,

Palin brought the negative attention upon herself by demonstrating an utter lack of understanding of the American Political System and demonstrating poor grasp of public policy, not by any ideological motivations from the media.

She may not have started the feud, but she sure as hell did not leave it be after he apologized. Moreover, she twisted his joke well beyond what he intended, in an effort to trump up more attention to the issue.

[David]

David -- Maybe I should call myself David from CA or conservative David so that readers can tell us apart. Although our opposite political views probably make it clear which of us is writing.

When you say Palin has "an utter lack of understanding of the American Political System and...poor grasp of public policy", I take that to mean merely that you disagree with her politically. Conservatives would say exactly the same thing about Obama.

If one sets politics aside and looks only at objective criteria, both Palin and Obama had woefully little experience and background for the office they were seeking. IMHO the mainstream media trashed Palin inordinately and supported Obama inordinately.

[bnyhan]

Nascardaughter -- look at the Hillary polls at Pollingreport.com (linked above). She had a 44/54 favorable/unfavorable as recently as April 2008 in the ABC/Washington Post poll. More generally, she's generally had unfavorables in the mid 30s to high 40s since the 1990s.

Truth Meter -- Fox just came out with a poll that has even worse Palin numbers: 38% favorable, 51% unfavorable. We'll know more as more polling is done, but right now the weight of the evidence suggests that her public image has taken a significant hit. (Note: The favorable/unfavorable #s are more significant than the trial heats, which largely reflect her levels of name recognition.)

[nascardaughter]

Thanks Brendan, I missed that.

Grouping Clinton with Bush and Cheney also seemed kind of weird to me, but I guess it depends in what sense you mean "polarizing." Seems to me that Bush and Cheney have polled negatively for a while, so I think of them as just generally out of favor right now, rather than polarizing.