Reading more into the CBS/New York Times poll I posted earlier, it looks like the GOP has some rough road ahead when they try to retake the White House, even with President Obama’s low approval rating. As with most other polls, this one also finds Herman Cain as the front runner:
| Herman Cain | 25% |
| Mitt Romney | 21% |
| Newt Gingrich | 10% |
| Rick Perry | 6% |
We still see a hot race for the front runner, but Cain is sitting pretty right now. One amazing take-a-way is how much Rick Perry has plummeted. The media really got it wrong on this one.
There are a couple of numbers I left out of that table which do show a problem. Right now 12% want someone else and 11% are undecided. So that gives us 23% who aren’t sold on the choices they have and that spells an enthusiasm problem for the field. Another interesting tidbit is that even with all the debates we have had, 80% of the people who had chosen a candidate still think it’s too early to say if they are 100% sold on their pick. The GOP field isn’t selling themselves at all and that is a big problem and actually this number has increased since last month and with a couple more debates under the belt.
But what about the issues? Well this poll dives into those somewhat. First off is how American’s are prioritizing the country’s problems:
| Jobs | 33% |
| Economy | 24% |
| Deficit | 5% |
| Health Care | 2% |
| Immigration | 2% |
| War | 1% |
| Abortion | 0% |
Jobs and the economy are rightfully the hot button issues and as I pointed out in my previous post, President Obama is clearly leading the way on these issues.
Terrorism has always been a GOP strong point, but that hardly even rates in this poll and if it did, I’m sure President Obama would win that given his high approval rating on the handling of the war in Iraq.
The big thing here is core Republican issues. The deficit is the big winner here, if you can consider 5% a winner. Immigration is only at 2% and abortion doesn’t even rate.
So what does all that mean once we enter the general? Well for the GOP to retake the White House they will have to take a lot of independents. That means straying from their base on one or more of the above issues, which translates into alienating their core voters. That’s enough to keep hard core Republicans away from the polling place and help Obama win his second term.
And then we have another big issue we heard about in the 2010 midterms – healthcare. The key word then was “repeal” and I’m sure it will make an appearance in 2012 as well. The problem is that repeal isn’t what the people want:
|
Repeal Entire Law |
Repeal Certain Parts |
Let Stand |
Don’t Know |
|
25% |
20% |
41% |
15% |
So we see almost 2/3rds of the country wanting the law to stand or at least parts of it. That means “repeal” isn’t going to work this year. Again – a big problem for the GOP once we hit the general election.
To sum it up the Republicans might look like they are sitting pretty right now, but the fact is they are far from it. You see enthusiasm coming from things like the debate, but that’s the media and the hard core base. Once the GOP is released into the wild of the general election, they are going to look like a fish out of water. No presidential candidate can win on the party vote alone and right now President Obama is blowing away the GOP when it comes to appealing to the moderates and independents. For the GOP to close this gap, they have to seriously alienate their base and that could be a big killed come election day.
But there is something even bigger at play here. Right now we have two movements in the news, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Guess which one is winning public support? 46% of the people say that Occupy Wall Street reflects their views, while only 24% now support the Tea Party. This explains why the right is so hell bent on smearing #OWS; they know that this movement will severely cripple their chances at winning in 2012. As the old political notion goes, if everyone votes then Democrats will win every time. That’s very true with this, as the movement is more likely to get out the Democratic voters than it is the Republican ones.