Friday, November 27, 2009

Rasmussen 2012 Trial Heats (Nov. '09): Another Tie for Romney Against Obama

There's nothing like Black Friday for a 2012 polling dump. Earlier this week, Rasmussen provided us with its first glance at the 2012 presidential trial heats since July and back in the summer, the firm only included Romney and Palin against Obama. This time they have added Mike Huckabee to the mix, and more interestingly, Lou Dobbs as a third party candidate. But we'll get to that moment. I'll give you the numbers and figures to start and return later to add in the analysis.

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Obama: 45%
Huckabee: 41%
Other: 6%
Not Sure: 8%
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Obama: 46%
Palin: 43%
Other: 9%
Not Sure: 3%
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Obama: 44%
Romney: 44%
Other: 6%
Not Sure: 5%
Pollster: Rasmussen
Margin of Error: +/- 3.5%
Sample: 800 likely voters (nationwide)
Conducted: November 24, 2009

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Not surprisingly, Lou Dobbs hurts the Republican candidates more so than the president when he is included in the line of questioning in the survey. Romney is hit the hardest; losing 10% off his total from the two candidate question. But the former Massachusetts governor had the most to lose since he did the best of the Republicans against Obama in the two candidate polling.

And here's one more from Democracy Corps [pdf] with Dobbs and Nader included as third party candidates.

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Pollster: Democracy Corps
Margin of Error: +/- 3%
Sample: 1000 (2008 election) voters (nationwide)
Conducted: November 12-16, 2009


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9 comments:

  1. Palin got her book-tour bump! Looks like the Obama campaign needs to develop a strategy to raise money for Lou Dobbs. I wonder how the race would look with Dick Cheney in the race.

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  2. Review of The Audacity of Hope by David Plouffe

    I am an avid reader and thought the readers of Frontloading HQ would be interested in my take on Plouffe’s book. For those who closely followed the 2008 Presidential election, the book offers few surprises. For those who did not follow it closely, some passages will be confusing as he assumes that you did.

    What I found most fascinating was they did not even have the first strategy session until after the 2006 Congressional election, and Obama did not even make his decision to run until early January of 2007. He changed his mind from a complete denial on Russert in early 2006 based on the response to the book tour. The burning issues that drove him were health care and the environment. Although they used the Iraq war quite effectively against Hilary, it was not an issue that affected his decision to get in the race.

    To be continued

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  3. The Audacity to Win Part 2

    The secret to the campaign was to keep the plan simple, emphasize the first four states for the nomination, focus on delegate selection and electoral votes, and not to be a slave to political convention. The inner circle included Axelrod, Gibbs and Plouffe. Barack set the tone for the campaign, but he bought into the overlying strategy. Michelle was an occasional, but decisive, player. They laid down simple rules at the beginning and stuck to their rules and plan. Paul Gurian, who led our political discussion group in 2007/8, said that many Presidential candidates roll the dice on Iowa or New Hampshire but are unable to take the campaign national when they win. The ability to raise large amounts of money early allowed them to reproduce the organizational structure they developed in Iowa and New Hampshire in the Super Tuesday states and those that followed rapidly after. Without that early money, Plouffe indicates that they could not have won. The frontloading made it impossible for anyone without big money to survive after the first four states. Out-raising Clinton in the first reporting quarter also sent a message within the party that Obama was a serious candidate. He credits Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, and its subsequent tour as the key to the decision to run, but he does not tie the success in fund-raising to the book.

    Plouffe indicates that the delegate pursuit rather than focusing on the popular vote was a key factor in winning the nomination even though they had to withstand harsh criticism both from outside the campaign staff and within it. The only time they deviated from that strategy was to divert resources from North Carolina to Indiana after the Pennsylvania primary to lower the delegate take in North Carolina for a better political result in Indiana. In retrospect, he concedes they should have cut back on the emphasis of delegates in the Texas caucus for a better popular vote in the primary earlier in the day. Two other aspects of the campaign that really helped Obama were Mark Penn, whose strategy almost always surprised and delighted Plouffe, and the Democratic National Committee’s decision not to recognize the Michigan and Florida primaries. He suggests that had those two states counted, it would have diverted resources from other states and their chances in Florida were abysmal. He points out that Hilary had the votes on the committee, but that its members were either committed to the rules or the Clinton campaign did not take Obama seriously enough at that time. He indicated that any time the Obama campaign made a “political” response, they got in trouble, and any time they bucked conventional politics they were successful. The seamless transition from the primary campaign to the general election was also very impressive, once again greatly aided by the money.

    The book is not a particularly good recounting of the election. Many key events are either left out or mentioned only in passing. For example, nothing is said at all about the Republican nomination contest other than the night that McCain clinched the nomination giving him a three-month head start on Obama. It focuses on the Obama campaign and direct influences on it. It’s most important contribution is an insight into how he and Axelrod developed the strategy for one of the most impressive Presidential campaigns in US history and how they implemented it.

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  4. Obama: 44%
    Huckabee (needs to changed to Romney): 44%
    Other: 6%
    Not Sure: 5%

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  5. Good catch Ell. That was a lazy copy and paste right there.

    Thanks for the comments, Rob. I'll have to look them over in more detail and respond tomorrow.

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  6. Oops! That should be The Audacity to Win.

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  7. Expect Huckabee's numbers to take a hit based on the news this weekend. He indicated that he might not be that interested

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/30/huckabee-unsure-about-another-presidential-bid/

    before the other shoe dropped

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/30/huckabee-responds-to-washington-shootings/

    A pardon by another governor named Mike (Michael) was detrimental, not that Sarah, Mitt or Newt would ever bring it up.

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  8. Here are those Huckabee links from Rob:

    One

    and

    Two

    This may affect his, at least relative to some of the other candidates, sky-high favorability ratings in the polls of all Americans. It has the potential to at least. If Huckabee is serious about another run in 2012, it is better that this happened now as opposed to this time two years from now. Still, I think there will be some impact from this.

    On Plouffe's book:
    I don't know that the lack of discussion of things across the aisle -- GOP nomination race or otherwise -- is all that surprising. Given conditions during the summer and fall months, Obama and/or generic Democrat X would have held some noticeable advantage over any Republican. That isn't to say Obama wasn't imperiled at any point during the campaign, but that that national Democratic lean in tandem with Obama's ability to raise money gave him a decided cushion that no Republican could have had. The real contest was beating Clinton and moving forward with a palatable message of change.

    But will Obama have brought about enough change for part two in this series? That is the question now.

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  9. Looks like Palin thought she'd at least make mention of the police shootings in Washington while she was there on her tour.

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