Who was at the top of the net favorability ratings?
My man Mike Huckabee, Lord of the Fair Tax, King of the Goofy Grin, Champion of the Iowa Primary and All Around Decent Politician.
Er, oops, did I just bare my political soul?
A little.
During the last Presidential campaign I would often feel rather like a stranger in an unholy land when identifying myself as a conservative 20-something in a very democratic urban area. My car was egged in my work parking lot the day I debuted a McCain bumper sticker. This was the second sticker on my car - the first one was ripped off while car sat parked in front of my office. SO, I'm a touch sensitive about bringing this up, BUT --
Here are some of the observations CNN made about the poll (you can find their ticker item here).
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee appears to have the clear advantage out of the gate when it comes to the 2012 battle for the GOP presidential nomination, enjoying a significantly higher net-favorability rating and name identification among national Republicans than any other potential candidate.
According to the new survey by Gallup, Huckabee has a net-favorability rating (the difference between those who hold a favorable view and those who hold an unfavorable view) of 30 percent.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is six points back with a net-favorable of 24 percent with former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin are close behind at 23 percent and 22 percent respectively.
Several more possible candidates, including dark horse favorite Mike Pence, Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Rep. Ron Paul, former Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Jon Thune, registered in the high teens.
The survey also shows a clear divide in name identification - with Huckabee, Palin, Romney, and Gingrich considerably more well known to Republicans than the rest of the field - a fact that suggests their favorability ratings may be more static than those of the lesser know candidates because voters have already had ample opportunity to form opinions about them compared to those who are new to the national scene.
Moreover, in what is an ominous sign for Palin and Gingrich, the two generate higher levels of negative reactions than any other leading candidate, a factor that significantly decreases their net favorability rating.
In fact, Palin by far generates the most negative reaction among some Republicans, with 8 percent saying they strongly disfavor her. That compares to 1 percent who said the same about Mike Huckabee and 4 percent who strongly disfavor Gingrich.
The Gallup poll was conducted Jan. 4-5 among 923 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents interviewed by telephone. It carries a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Want to get more technical? Let's read some of the "implications of the poll" straight from the Gallup mouth (poll is published here):
The first actual votes in the Republican nomination process will be cast more than a year from now. Despite this, many potential Republican candidates are already hard at work making appearances, putting together campaign teams, raising money, and generally gathering momentum for a run at the GOP nomination and the right to oppose President Obama's presumed bid for re-election in November 2012.
At this point, five potential candidates have a decided name identification advantage among nationwide Republicans, largely because they ran for president in 2008 (Romney, Huckabee, and Paul), were actually on the 2008 GOP ticket (Palin), or were highly visible Republican federal officeholders (Gingrich). All of the others tested in this research begin the campaign process with significant name identification deficits.
Presumably, one goal for this latter group of candidates during the coming year -- should they decide to pursue the nomination seriously -- will be to gain name recognition among GOP voters across the country and particularly in key primary states.
Huckabee generates the most positive net favorable reaction of any of the potential candidates tested. Palin and Gingrich generate levels of strongly positive reactions that are similar to Huckabee's, but also generate more strongly negative reactions, pulling down their overall net favorable scores. Romney has slightly lower strongly favorable opinions, but receives fewer strongly negative opinions than either Palin or Gingrich.
No candidate at this early point in the campaign can claim to generate strong reactions from rank-and-file Republicans. This suggests that one objective for these politicians during the coming year will be to create higher levels of enthusiasm if not emotion for their candidacies.
Gallup's net favorable measure in essence controls for the candidates' recognition levels and provides an indication of the potential appeal of a candidate if he or she were to become better known. At this point, none of the less well-known candidates tested in this research appears to have unusual potential based on this measure, meaning that none is generating unusually strong positive reactions among the smaller group of Republicans who know them.
Now, I should clarify a bit about the journey that brought me around to this gleeful perspective. During the last round of presidential campaigns, I was an early supporter of and financial contributor to the Huckabee campaign. I wasn't all that shocked when he blew through the competition in Iowa, he's got a heartland appeal that most of the rest of the crowded field of GOP contenders couldn't quite muster. Plus, he's fiscally creative. Seemed smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. And, for lack of a more concrete description, on a somewhat more cerebral level, I just TRUSTED the guy in a way I WANTED to trust McCain, in a way I'd never trust Romney and in a way I think most of us conservative leaning voters would chuckle about when used in conjunction with the name Gingrich. Oh - is that just me?
Anyway - enter the McCain sprint (ha.) to the finish line and the addition of Palin as running mate. I was elated. I loved that she came from somewhere other than The Hill. I loved that she had a real family full of real kids. She seemed infused with a sort of wide-eyed, innocent sort of hopefulness over her cause. She was different. She had Newscaster Hair. She wasn't ashamed of being female or a mother on the campaign trail. I gave her an extended benefit of the doubt (which may or may not have had to do with the fact that she lived next door to some of my in-laws at the time so there was a sort of "aw shucks, she's our neighbor!" excitement that gave her an aura of familiarity). I defended her (on this very blog, in fact) against the onslaught of "get your family in order, then think about politics" jeers from mostly female voters who couldn't quite stomach the idea of a veep who admitted to lipstick and hairspray and misspoke from time to time.
And it just got uglier and uglier.
She kept putting her foot in her mouth. Kept oversimplifying the desires of the American Voting Public. Seemed to forget that the entire country wasn't just a bunch of plumbers from the Midwest or farmer's wives or hockey moms. There were those of us who had a hard time forgiving oddly inflammatory rhetoric without the correct stats and information to back it up.
I tired of the ubiquity. We couldn't open a newspaper or visit a website or channel surf without Palin popping up somewhere. Fox News took her on as a sometime-pundit. She wrote books. Then her kids got into the spotlight. We had to deal with baby daddy drama, with public breakups, with reality programming. She teamed up with Kate Gosselin and all of a sudden we had a team of the most publicly reviled moms in America obliviously subjecting us to their delusions of grandeur.
I just wanted her to go away.
So, too, did the rest of the country. SO, cagey though she might have been over the past few months about her intentions for higher public office (oh heavens, no. Alaska is not a great representation of the temperature of the typical American Voter. Neither would be Fox News), if she's smart, she'll take a look at polls like this telling her that America does not like her. Her conservative base does not like her. Neither do we like accusations that images of rifle crosshairs on her website indicating congressional districts she'd like to "target" had anything to do with this weekend's shooting in Arizona - you start getting your name associated with "rhetoric that may have contributed to a mass shooting" and things get even uglier.
ALL OF WHICH is to say it's probably done Huckabee well to stay more or less under the radar this year - he raised money for HuckPAC, he did some television, but he managed to maintain enough goodwill that people like him better than they like the other names out there right now.
And that makes this little conservative kid sort of happy.
Go Huck.
As an Obama matron, I have to admit that I'd rather have Huckabee run than any of the other GOP contenders; better still, on the same ticket with my guy.
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