Look out President Barack Obama. Even Sarah Palin’s gaining on you.
A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.
Even in potential matchups where he leads, Obama in most cases has lost ground to the Republican.
The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.
Shock Poll: Obama Only Five Points Up on...Palin
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This is just one poll, but it does tell us that the “electability” argument on the Republican side isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be. Not because Palin is catching up per se, but because a majority now thinks Obama will lose to whoever the Republican nominee is. It’s Obama who may no longer be electable. Obama isn’t losing independents, he has already lost them, and it’s looking more like the GOP nomination contest has become what the NFC championship games between the Cowboys and 49ers were in years gone by — the actual NFL championship game.
Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.
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