Public Policy Polling: A tie at the top for Palin and Romney

Palin 16%, Romney 16%, Pawlenty 13%, Cain 12%
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With Mitt Romney in New Hampshire to launch his presidential campaign and Sarah Palin's One Nation bus rolling into the Granite State to host a clambake for influential conservatives, the stage was perfectly set for Public Policy Polling to release the results of its latest national survey of GOP primary voters:

PPP's first national poll looking at the Republican Presidential race since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump announced they wouldn't run finds Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin in a tie at the top with 16% each. Tim Pawlenty at 13% and Herman Cain at 12% are also in double digits with Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul each at 9%, and Jon Huntsman at 4% rounding out the field.

Romney's support is built on moderate and center right Republicans, while Palin's winning the most conservative faction of the party. With moderates Romney's at 26% with only Pawlenty at 15% also reaching double digits and Palin in third at 8%. With 'somewhat conservative' voters Romney likewise leads with 19% to 15% each for Pawlenty and Palin. But with voters identifying as 'very conservative' Romney finds himself well back in 5th place at 11% with Palin leading the way at 20%, followed by Cain at 15%, Bachmann at 13%, and Pawlenty at 12%.

The Democrat polling company's somewhat smallish sample is made up of 574 primary voters who usually cast their primary ballots for Republicans. The pollster, whose clients include radical leftist site Daily Kos and the SEIU, conducted automated telephone interviews from May 23rd to 25th.

h/t: Henry D'Andrea

- JP

PPP: Gov. Palin leads in Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Maine (Updated)

And a close second in Florida and Minnesota
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The latest batch of GOP presidential primary polls conducted just prior to the midterm elections by Democrat research firm Public Policy Polling finds Mitt Romney ahead in Florida, Tim Pawlenty "surprisingly weak in his home state" of Minnesota, and Sarah Palin leading in Texas, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and... Maine? Yes, Maine! More from PPP's Tom Jensen:

The most important state to the nomination process on this list is Florida and there Romney's ahead with 28% to 22% for Palin and 15% for Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. It should be noted that although Romney does have the lead, it's a much less lofty one than what he posted in a March PPP poll of the state when he had 44%. The only other candidates included in that poll were Palin and Huckabee and we're finding more and more as we do these polls that when new folks are added into the mix it tends to hurt Romney more than anyone else. His support is less solid than Palin's and Huckabee's so even though he looks like a very nominal front runner at this point, he's also the candidate most likely to see his support collapse as things heat up.

Tim Pawlenty leads the field in his home state of Minnesota but his performance is surprisingly weak. He gets 19% with Palin right on his heels at 18%, Huckabee at 14%, and Gingrich and Romney each getting 11%. These numbers are reflective of the overall trouble we found for Pawlenty at home in our final preelection poll of the state- his approval rating was under water and voters overwhelmingly said they didn't think he should run for President. Partially because of Pawlenty's declining popularity Democrats seem to have picked up the Governor's office there in an otherwise awful year for the party. Palin actually leads Pawlenty 20-18 with conservatives but the Governor leads overall thanks to a 27-10 advantage with moderates. It is no coincidence that Romney is in the basement in this state- we've found several places now that where Pawlenty is unusually strong the victim seems to be Romney because of a greater split in the vote among GOP centrists.

Palin holds small leads in the remaining states. Most noteworthy is her strength in Texas and West Virginia, which suggests a bid from her could really hurt Mike Huckabee in the South. In Texas she gets 22% to 20% for Huckabee and 15% for both Gingrich and Romney. In West Virginia she's at 25% to 22% for Huckabee and again 15% for both Gingrich and Romney. These margins are obviously very close but they nevertheless pose trouble for Huckabee and perhaps even more so Gingrich if she ends up making a bad because strength in the South would be vital to either of their prospects.

Romney may not have a complete strangle hold on New England- Palin gets 23% in Maine to 18% for Romney, 16% for Huckabee, and 14% for Gingrich. Those numbers should give folks who think there's no chance Maine Republicans would nominate someone far right against Olympia Snowe in 2012 second thoughts. And finally Palin gets 18% in Wisconsin to 15% for Huckabee, 14% for Gingrich, and 12% for Romney. Pawlenty has his best non-Minnesota performance so far at 8%, not surprising given that it's right next door. And Pawlenty's unusually strong Wisconsin number helps to explain Romney's unusually weak Wisconsin number.

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We find it significant that in many of the states where others are leading, Gov. Palin is running a strong second, for example in Minnesota (where Pawlenty's lead over her is within the margin of error) and Florida (where the Romney lead is right at the MOE). In Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Senator-elect Marco Rubio, she has powerful conservative friends in both states.

PPP is serious about polling the primaries. They have released polls in 12 states, with Romney leading in 5 (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New Hampshire), Gov. Palin in 4 (Maine, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin), Huckabee in 2 (Illinois, Pennsylvania), and Pawlenty in 1 (Minnesota.) Jensen promises that his company will have results from a final batch of six polls -- including Alaska, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington -- out early next week.

Full results are available here as a PDF document.

h/t: Hot Air

Update: Susequent PPP polling (PDF) shows Gov. Palin also leading in Ohio and Washington State. She second to Huckabee in Kentucky and tied for second behind Gingrich in North Carolina.

- JP

Don't put too much stock in PPP's latest Texas poll

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PPP is touting its recent Texas poll, in which it claims GOP voters prefer New Gingrich for the 2012 Presidential nomination. They show Gingrich with 23 percent, with Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee tied for second at 19 percent each and Mitt Romney with 17 percent.

The problem is it's a PPP survey, and the Democrat polling firm is notoriously off the mark with its polling results. One reason is that the company uses ridiculously small sample sizes. In this poll, for example, it only surveyed 400 Texas Republican primary voters. With such a scarcity of data points, the poll has a margin of error (MOE) of nearly 5 percent, plus or minus. That means any of the top three potential candidates could be in the lead. So basically, it's a three-way tie.

Nevertheless, PPP's Tom Jensen tries to spin the poll metric that former speaker Gingrich beats Gov. Palin among Texas conservatives by 24 percent to 21 percent. The three-point difference, again, is well within the 4.9 percent MOE, so either one could actually be in the lead.

In grad school, Dr. Phil Taylor, who taught our statistics class, said that you really need a minimum sample size of 800 or so to reliably make inferences based upon your sample. A 3 percent MOE at a 90 percent confidence level, for example requires a sample size of about 750 data points at the bare minimum.

It gets even sloppier. PPP, in the disclaimer about its methodology, advises that "other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify." Yikes...

- JP

New PPP Poll Shows Haley Staying Strong in SC

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Despite the attacks from her opponents on her character, her faith and her ethnicity, Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen says that results of his firm's latest survey indicate that Nikki Haley hasn't suffered any significant political damage from from the unsupported allegations:

Nikki Haley hasn't suffered any damage whatsoever after accusations of multiple extramarital affairs and is headed for an easy first place finish in Tuesday's Republican primary for Governor of South Carolina.

Haley has a 20 point lead, getting 43% of the vote. Gresham Barrett looks like the favorite for the second runoff spot. He's at 23%, followed by Henry McMaster at 16%, and Andre Bauer at 12%.

Two weeks ago Haley held a 21 point lead in the race. Since then she's gained 4 points, Barrett's standing has improved by 7, McMaster's has dropped by a couple points, and Bauer's gone down a single point.

Only 13% of voters believe the allegations about Haley's marital infidelity.

A PDF document showing complete poll results is here. Sarah Palin endorsed Haley May 14 and has staunchly defended her against the unproven charges.

- JP

PPP Polling: Palin turns negatives into positives

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Polling firm Public Policy Polling has conducted two national surveys and four state polls since Sarah Palin's July 3 announcement that she would resign. PPP is a Democrat polling organization, so we wouldn't expect them to spin their results any other way than to play down any improvement shown by the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate. But we must admit that this stretch gave us a good laugh:

"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."

A slight improvement? Sarah Palin has gone from unfavorably perceived overall to viewed favorably. She has increased her positives by four points and decreased her negatives by 5 points. that's a 9-point turnaround in less than a month, and she managed it while on the receiving end of a barrage of bogus ethics complaints, assaults from the punditocracy and rotten treatment from a hostile press. We call that a major turnaround. Looks like that resigning thing is working out just fine for her.

With football season just around the corner, please forgive us a gridiron metaphor or two. It's still early in the game. And so far, all we have seen is the Palin defense. Just wait until Sarah takes the ball and starts calling the plays.

Update: Townhall.com columnist Larry Elder puts polls in perspective.

Related: In an online poll conducted by NewsMax.com, nearly 80 percent of the respondents indicated that they support a Palin run for the presidency in 2012. Two caveats - it's not a scientific poll, and NewsMax readership is very conservative overall. We already knew that Sarah Palin is the overwhelming choice of conservatives to be the GOP nominee in '12. But we have to admit that the sample size -- 600,000 plus -- is impressive.

- JP

Sarah Palin still the choice of GOP moderates

Via Tom Jensen at the PPP blog:

For the second month in a row we found Sarah Palin as the most popular of the leading 2012 GOP hopefuls among moderate Republicans. 64% have a positive opinion of her compared to 57% for Newt Gingrich, 53% for Mike Huckabee, and 45% for Mitt Romney.

Gov. Palin has arguably been the choice of conservative Republicans since the 2008 election in early November. Now she is winning over the GOP's more moderate voters. And according to a Pew Research poll released June 24, her favorability ratings have increased by 6 points among independents and 7 points with Democrats.

There's no question that Sarah Palin is broadening her appeal.

- JP

Surprise! Poll: Palin popular with GOP in northeast

According to PPP, a firm which polls for Democrats, Sarah Palin's popularity among Republicans is actually stronger in the northeast than in either the south or the midwest:

"Palin is viewed favorably by 89% of western Republicans, 86% in the northeast, 76% in the south, and 71% in the midwest. I wouldn't extrapolate these numbers too far, but it might be an indication she could do better in New Hampshire than Iowa. That might be particularly true if Tim Pawlenty gets a next door bonus like Dick Gephardt did in 1988 and Barack Obama did last year."

On PPP's blog, Tom Jensen says it's really not all that surprising since the percentage of Republican voters who identify as conservatives is in the 70 percent to 80 percent range in all geographic areas of the country.

Jensen opines that Gov. Palin might do better in New Hampshire than Iowa, but he preferences that speculation by warning, "I wouldn't extrapolate these numbers too far." Nor would we. It's early yet, and the governor is expected by most analysts to do well in Iowa. Plus, support for a candidate in Iowa may not be representative of that candidate's support in other midwestern states. Time will tell.

The PPP results do, however, back up findings by Gallup that put Gov. Palin's favorability ratings at 72 percent, a double-digit advantage over Mitt Romney at 56 percent.

- JP

PPP Poll is not believable (Updated)

I really hate to bite the hand that directs traffic to me. After all, the GOP 12 folks were nice enough to link to my cross-post at RedState.com about the AR-15 the NRA will present to Gov. Palin next month.

But the website accepts at face value a poll from Public Policy Polling which is supposed to show in a hypothetical 2012 match up, how various Republican candidates would fare against President Obama:

Sarah Palin's numbers are an interesting conundrum. She easily has the best favorability among Republicans voters, with 76% saying they have a positive opinion of her. The other three range from 60-67 with the party base. But she also has the largest percentage of GOP voters- 21%- who say they would vote for Obama if she ended up being the party nominee. So for the folks in the party who don't like her that feeling is strong enough they'd rather vote for a Democrat. It adds up to a 12 point deficit for her, 53-41. Overall the electorate has a negative opinion of Palin, 42/49.

I'm a bit more skeptical about the results of this poll than the good people at GOP 12 for several reasons:

The PPP poll is at odds with results from more accurate surveys. Rasmussen, for example, found Gov. Palin's favorable to unfavorable rating to be 52/46 at the end of January. This is within the margin of error of a CNN poll which reported a 49/43 favorable/unfavorable ratio for the Alaska governor just after the election.

By more accurate polls, I mean that PPP doesn't even show up in this list of the 23 most accurate polling firms, as determined by Panagopoulos at Fordham University:

The following list ranks the 23 organizations by the accuracy of their final, national pre-election polls (as reported on pollster.com).
1. Rasmussen (11/1-3)**
1. Pew (10/29-11/1)**
2. YouGov/Polimetrix (10/18-11/1)
3. Harris Interactive (10/20-27)
4. GWU (Lake/Tarrance) (11/2-3)*
5. Diageo/Hotline (10/31-11/2)*
5. ARG (10/25-27)*
6. CNN (10/30-11/1)
6. Ipsos/McClatchy (10/30-11/1)
7. DailyKos.com (D)/Research 2000 (11/1-3)
8. AP/Yahoo/KN (10/17-27)
9. Democracy Corps (D) (10/30-11/2)
10. FOX (11/1-2)
11. Economist/YouGov (10/25-27)
12. IBD/TIPP (11/1-3)
13. NBC/WSJ (11/1-2)
14. ABC/Post (10/30-11/2)
15. Marist College (11/3)
16. CBS (10/31-11/2)
17. Gallup (10/31-11/2)
18. Reuters/ C-SPAN/ Zogby (10/31-11/3)
19. CBS/Times (10/25-29)
20. Newsweek (10/22-23)

Public Policy Polling is a Democrat polling organization. Unlike Rasmussen, they have a vested interest in the outcomes of their surveys. I'm not accusing them of fudging their numbers. Just saying that they are not without their biases.

And finally, no other polling firm shows Gov. Palin with higher unfavorables than favorables, which again calls the results of this PPP poll into question. If you look strictly at PPP numbers, the 42/49 favorable to unfavorable results of this poll show a sharp improvement over what PPP reported last month, when it showed favorable/unfavorable numbers for Palin of 50/39. If you believe PPP's numbers, then you have to believe that both the governors' favorables and unfavorables increased by 8-10 points in 30 days.

And that seem far-fetched to me. Even if recent negative press had been successful in driving down her numbers,  Palin's unfavorables would have increased, and her favorables would have declined, which they did not. I'll wait for the next time Rassmussen, the most accurate pollster, runs the numbers on Sarah Palin again, thanks.

Update: Videmus Omnia reports that Allahpundit at Hot Air has sipped the Kool Aid and bought into this questionable poll lock, stock and barrel. But Allah always is quick to believe the worst about Gov. Palin.

- JP