With Barack Obama's polling numbers hitting the worst levels of his Presidency recently there have been a lot of calls, mostly from conservatives, for us to poll Hillary against Obama for the 2012 nomination.
We're not going to do that but even if we did I wouldn't expect it to be very interesting. In March we asked Democratic voters across the country if they thought Obama should be the party's nominee again in 2012. 77% said yes, 16% said no, and 7% weren't sure.
Those figures pretty much track his current approval numbers with Democrats- 81% approve of him and 16% disapprove. Obama has plenty of problems. His base isn't one of them.
With all due respect, there is a big difference between asking people whether they believe that Obama deserves to be reelected, and asking them who they would vote for between Clinton and Obama if a presidential primary election were held today. One can in all honesty believe that Obama has done nothing that should prevent him from being reelected, and yet rather have Secretary Clinton be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2012 for fear that Obama would have a very tough time being reelected. It would be quite interesting to see the results of a Clinton/Obama match-up in an early voting state like NH, even as this early stage of the action...
ReplyDeleteClinton won't challenge Obama and would be demolished if she did, so there's no point. (If she finds a reason to quit, then polling her might make sense.)
ReplyDeleteThe poll I still want to see -- and you jokesters at PPP did this to yourselves -- is that Obama/Bush fantasy election.
The gap was two points when we last saw it.
Can W overtake his successor?