Wednesday, July 29, 2009

25 days later...the impact of Palin's resignation

Since Sarah Palin announced she was going to resign we've done two national polls and four state level ones that included questions about her...so what's the verdict?

She's not in any worse of a position now than she was before July 3rd, but she was already in a pretty bad position then if her goal is to be President.

In national surveys we conducted in May and June Palin's favorability with American voters averaged out to 43/50. In two polls conducted since she announced her resignation it's been 47/45. So there's been a slight improvement on that front.

In a hypothetical contest against Barack Obama she went from trailing 52-40 in June to 51-43 in July. That reduction in her margin against Obama probably reflects a decline in his popularity more than a gain in hers.

Her national numbers are where we have before and after comparisons from the resignation. In the state polls we just have to compare her performance against Obama to John McCain's.

-In North Carolina Obama beat McCain 50-49 and leads Palin 49-42 in a possible contest.
-In Louisiana McCain beat Obama 59-40, Palin leads 49-42 in the hypothetical.
-In Minnesota Obama won 54-44 and leads Palin 56-35 in a prospective match.

In that trio of states then Palin's running an average of ten points worse than McCain did. And that's probably what it comes down to- her popularity hasn't decreased since she resigned probably because most folks who were inclined to dislike her already did. But she still has a lot of ground to make up to even match McCain's performance at the polls last year and obviously that wasn't nearly good enough.

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