Whittington: Encouraging Poll Results for Palin in Swing States

All she needs is the will to take the fight to the president and take away his title.
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The media has for months been insisting the Sarah Palin is not electable, citing their own heavily massaged poll numbers, while ignoring more reliable surveys which show her favorability ratings are on the rise. As Mark Whittington points out, Gov. Palin is tied statistically with President Barack Obama in several swing states that Obama absolutely must win in 2012 to avoid becoming a one-term president:

The numbers are as follows, according to Poll Insider.

Nevada -- Obama: 46.5 percent, Palin: 43 percent
Ohio -- Obama: 46 percent, Palin: 43.5 percent
North Carolina -- Obama: 47.5 percent, Palin:43.5 percent
Missouri -- Obama: 45 percent, Palin: 44 percent
Pennsylvania -- Obama: 46 percent, Palin: 42 percent

There are several takeaways from this news.

First, the president, even though he leads Palin in each of the statewide contests, does not crack the 50 percent threshold. This is considered very dangerous for an incumbent and an opportunity for a challenger.

Next, the numbers are remarkable because the PPP organization tends to oversample Democrats. A correct sampling of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents would almost certainly place Palin in a better position, perhaps even ahead in certain statewide contests.

Finally, considering the media campaign against Palin and the fact that she has not even announced her candidacy, not to speak of campaigned, the numbers should prove encouraging to the lady from Wasilla and disquieting to the president. It has been a truism for this political cycle, even to the extent of being received wisdom, that Palin cannot win the 2012 election under any circumstances. These numbers would seem to place that judgment in doubt.

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Whittington reminds his readers that national poll numbers are far less important than statewide polling results because the successful presidential candidate will be the one who wins the majority of those states with the most electoral votes.

Although Obama's campaign says publicly that it would like nothing better to run against Sarah Palin in the general election Whittington recalls that Jimmy Carter thought the same thing about Ronald Reagan before the peanut farmer got buried in a 489 to 49 electoral vote landslide in 1980. With the media's email Palinoscopy having blown up their faces and a compelling feature-length documentary film scheduled to premiere in theaters across the country in about a month, the governor has the opportunity to correct the media-fabricated public image of her. She in sync with most Americans on her policy positions, and her record of accomplishment as Alaska's CEO is at long last about to get the attention it deserves. She says she has the fire in the belly for a presidential fight. Now is the time to step into the ring for the preliminary bouts which much be fought to get her shot at taking away Obama's title.

- JP