The Possible Palin Mistake

Nate Silver had a good post yesterday about how Barack Obama could probably get reelected with a lower approval rating if Sarah Palin was his opponent as opposed to say Mitt Romney in 2012.



I completely agree. I looked at our last four 2012 polls and calculated the percentage of the vote Obama got among people who don't approve of him against Palin, Romney, and Mike Huckabee. Over the course of those surveys Obama averaged 9.5% against Palin with voters who fit that description while earning just 5% against both Huckabee and Romney.



Using Nate's example of a 45% approval rating, and assuming that everyone who approves of him would vote for him, that would give Obama 50.2% of the popular vote against Palin but just 47.8% against Huckabee or Romney. In other words nominating Palin vs. nominating one of the other Republicans would be the difference between GOP victory and GOP defeat. Obviously things could change a lot between now and 2012 with the perceptions of all these politicians but for now it does look like Palin would hurt Republican hopes of taking back the White House.



Here's the full data on how Obama does against the various Republican hopefuls with voters who don't approve of his job performance:

Obama % vs.	Huckabee	Palin	Romney
November	7	10	6
October	6	11	7
September	3	9	3
August	4	8	4