If Rick Santorum's really going to run for President he'd better hope folks in other states respond more positively to him than the ones in Pennsylvania who know him best.
Just finished crunching the numbers on our first poll of 2011, which we'll start rolling out in full tomorrow. For now here's what we found on Santorum:
-Only 38% of voters in the state have a favorable opinion of him to 44% with a negative one. His numbers are particularly bad with independents whose ratings of him break down 30/54.
-Santorum trails Barack Obama 48-40 in a hypothetical contest, despite the fact that Obama's approval numbers in Pennsylvania continue to be under water. Most striking are a 20 point advantage for Obama with independents and the fact that he pulls 79% of Democrats while only 72% of Republicans are committed to Santorum.
-Most worrisome for Santorum are his GOP primary numbers though. The 54% of home state Republicans with a favorable opinion of him is well behind the 64% who like Mike Huckabee and the 63% who like Sarah Palin, equal to the percentage who like Newt Gingrich, and just a hair above the 52% who like Mitt Romney. On the horse race question just 11% say Santorum would be their top choice as the party's nominee, putting him in 5th place behind those other four.
We've written a lot about how tepid Minnesota voters are toward Tim Pawlenty's candidacy but he's at least the top choice of Republicans in the state. Santorum doesn't even come close. Ultimately Pennsylvania is not likely to be real important to the GOP nomination process but Santorum needs voters in places like New Hampshire and Iowa to end up liking him better than the ones on the home front do.
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6 comments:
No wonder he travels outside PA so often.
Now that Arlen Specter has nothing to do, maybe he will run Rick's campaign.
When was the last time you polled the 2012 Presidential race for Arkansas? It would be interesting to see how Huckabee's favorables compared in his "home state" to those of some of the other potential candidates in theirs.
"When was the last time you polled the 2012 Presidential race for Arkansas?"
Never. We haven't done AR since early in 2010. With no senate or gubernatorial race going on there in 2012, and with the state not likely to be competitive in the general presidential election or the GOP primary for president, it's not likely to be high on our list of states to poll at this point.
Many of us would like to see Arkansas, Alaska, Georgia, and Utah polled. We are very curious to see how the Big 4 do against Obama.
Why? None of those states will be important in 2012. Very unlikely we poll any of them except maybe Utah for the Hatch primary or Georgia if somehow it's a little competitive again, but those will be further down the line, not early in the cycle, when we're trying to get a sense of the most important races.
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