And this isn’t some fly-by-night partisan polling firm, it’s a top-tier McClatchy-Marist poll. Now she needs to announce a decision, either in or out.
WASHINGTON — 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.
Overall, the gains among Republicans “speak to Obama’s decline among independents generally, and how the middle is not his right now,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the national survey.
“This will require him to find ways to either win back the middle or energize his base in ways that hasn’t happened so farm” Miringoff said
By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, voters said they definitely plan to vote against Obama, according to the poll. Independents by 53 percent to 28 percent said they definitely plan to vote against him.
Update: I’m at a loss how to interpret this.
(CNN) — While she still hasn’t made up her mind on a run for the White House, a new national poll suggests that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is making gains against President Barack Obama in a hypothetical 2012 general election matchup.
According to a McClatchy-Marist survey, the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee trails Obama 49 to 44 percent in a hypothetical showdown, after trailing by 21 points in an August poll and 26 points in a June survey. The poll indicates that Palin now leads the president among crucial independent voters.
But while the survey, which was released Tuesday, indicates Palin may be closing the gap with the president, it also suggests that most Republicans are not enthusiastic about her launching a bid for the nomination. By a 72 to 24 percent margin, Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP do not want Palin to run for the White House.
As for her plans for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Palin says they’re still up in the air.
“I think people are still going to be coming and going because there is still time, and I’m still one of those still considering,” she said Tuesday night in an interview on the Fox News Channel.
But Palin did acknowledge that the calendar will soon force a decision, as some of the early voting states in the primary and caucus season have November deadlines for candidates to appear on the ballot.