Tuesday, September 29, 2009

GOP Moderate Woes

On our national poll last week 19% of moderate Republicans said they voted for Barack Obama against John McCain last fall.

When we asked them to look toward 2012 34% said they'd vote for Obama against Sarah Palin, 31% against Jeb Bush, 21% against Mike Huckabee, and 20% against Mitt Romney.

It's safe to say there's no way a GOP President is going to be elected in 2012 if moderate Republicans are even more supportive of Obama than they were last year.

So it seems like the current crop of leading GOP contenders is not going to cut it with the swath of the party that is mainstream enough to consider voting Democratic.

More moderate alternatives may emerge- Tim Pawlenty? But it's going to be a challenge for any more mainstream candidate to make it to the general when 70% of Republican voters are conservatives. We certainly saw that last year with the fate of Rudy Giuliani's campaign (not that he didn't cause a lot of his own problems.)

I think the GOP's worst enemy in 2012 may be itself.
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM

    Tom,

    It seems like you are assuming numbers don't ever change three years out from an election.

    Are you discounting the possibility that Obama's fate will be that of his buddy Deval Patrick, who was also very popular at the beginning (approval rating well over 60%). Just in case someone tries to pull the racism angle because of the comparison to Patrick, how about Chet Culver?

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2009 at 2:56 PM

    Tom,

    If Obama goes in this route of governing, it does not matter. There will be a huge swing against obama.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2009 at 6:28 PM

    Tom,

    Uh oh, SurveyUSA has it 55-41 McDonnell over Deeds.

    It appears we'll get dueling Obama numbers in Virginia tomorrow from the IVF crew.

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  4. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2009 at 8:05 PM

    Being willing to vote democrat is far from mainstream in a country that the majority self identify as conservatives.
    Further, today's democrat party looks nothing like the democrat party of even forty years ago. They have moved so far left. Can you imagine ANY democrat like Truman, JFK of Johnson, Humphrey having favored the normalization of sexual perversion? No way.
    RINOs are not closer to the mainstream, they are left of it.
    We have had RINOs like Dole and McCain, they lose!

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  5. ElliotSeptember 30, 2009 at 11:37 AM

    Anonymous@8:05PM

    Actually, a strong plurality of the voting universe is moderate.

    The 2008 exit polls broke down the ideology like this:

    Moderate 44%
    Conservative 34%
    Liberal 22%

    So, point in fact, you are completely wrong.

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