After The Speech
Posted on September 4th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Since I have been saying for the last six days that the Palin choice would drag down the ticket, I should acknowledge that this doesn’t seem to be happening so far. In fact, one post-speech survey showed some important gains for McCain:
After viewing the speech, there is a 9 percent increase in the number of Independents that will “probably’ or “definitely” vote McCain/Palin.
Palin’s speech proved to be equally effective in swaying votes for both men and women. Among the independents who watched her speech, respondents who report that they will “probably” or “definitely” vote for McCain increased by 10% across both genders, around 38% of female independents and 36% of their male counterparts.
On the other hand, the GOP does have to contend with those voters (9% overall, 11% of Reps, 10% of conservatives) who say they are unwilling to vote for a woman for President*. I am assuming this attitude will have some effect on these voters’ willingness to support a ticket that includes a woman as VP. 10% of McCain voters are unwilling to vote for a woman for President, and another 7% are unsure whether they would be willing. That could help to explain why 9% of Republicans and particularly 16% of conservatives said in another survey that they are less likely to back McCain with Palin as VP. More likely, however, these are Republicans and conservatives who were already inclined to back Obama–only 3% of McCain backers say they are less likely to vote for McCain because of Palin. It could be that McCain voters who wouldn’t support a woman for President can rationalize their vote for McCain/Palin by treating the VP choice as trivial or irrelevant, but it seems to me that this may be a real problem for McCain among a significant portion of those who would have otherwise voted for him.
*In another odd result that pairs up with the surprisingly greater resistance to a black candidate for President among 18-29 year olds that I noted before, 15% of 18-29 year olds are unwilling to vote for a woman for President, which is a higher percentage than any other age group, including 65+. Whether this is a backlash against enforced diversity and the like, I don’t know, but it is another one of these curious examples of a small but significant group of young voters being more forthright in their opposition to women and minority candidates.
Update: SUSA has a poll from Washington that gauges respondents’ views on the value of the VP choices, and the results are worth noting. 46% say Biden is an asset, compared to 26% who say he is a liability; for Palin it is much closer at 45% asset, 39% liability. There are more people undecided about Biden’s impact because they say they do not know enough about him. That’s a bit ironic, considering how much of a fixture in Washington politics he has been compared to Palin’s obscurity on the national stage. The media firestorm around Palin has left far fewer people unsure about her, but she still seems to be doing McCain more good than harm. As you would expect, assessments of VP choices break down predictably along party lines, but pluralities of independents consider both Biden (45%) and Palin (46%) assets. The key difference is that there are significantly more independents who see Palin as a liability (40%) than view Biden that way (30%). More important, among independents there are equal numbers of respondents saying that the choice reflects poorly and well on McCain (tied at 43%), while independents think choosing Biden reflects well on Obama by a ten-point margin. For these Washington voters, the Palin choice seems to be mostly a wash. Opinions have hardened about Palin and have done so more quickly in just the last few days, no doubt aided by the media obsession with her and her family, which should give Biden more of an opportunity to make a favorable impression at the debate in the fall and gives Palin less margin for error in the coming months. Not surprisingly, the Palin choice goes over poorly with New Yorkers, who see her as a liability rather than an asset 42-35. We’ll have to wait for more competitive and representative states to be surveyed before being able to say more about the effect of the choice on the ticket.
Second Update: This small panel of Michigan voters largely did not respond well to the speech. Judging from this panel, the speech seems to have gone over particularly poorly with independent and older women.
Third Update: The Free Press panel’s independents were mostly pretty hard-core Obama supporters, so bear that in mind when considering their hostility to Palin’s speech.
Filed under: politics
“In another odd result that pairs up with the surprisingly greater resistance to a black candidate for President among 18-29 year olds that I noted before, 15% of 18-29 year olds are unwilling to vote for a woman for President, which is a higher percentage than any other age group, including 65+.”
I find this striking. Is this a trend, or a recent development? It seems to me that this could be more of a conflation of Hillary Clinton with “Woman President”, since she’s the only model we’ve had under scrutiny.
I am increasingly confident that your initial take was correct. I’d put it this way:
(1) As you updates confirm, the reaction to her speech was at best mixed. Given the dynamics of these sorts of things, that’s a really bad sign. The usual pattern would be for an unambiguously initial positive reaction (virtually ANY politician looks good when giving prepared remarks in a sympathetic setting), perhaps eroding over time.
(2) With the usual caveats, initial, pre-speech polling suggested that the initial voter reaction to her selection was negative. At best, the speech reduced this negative reaction (temporarily in my view), but didn’t erase it.
(3) I think there are a huge number of reasons going forward why last night was her high point. Some of the issues raised by the media in the last few days will have legs, even if most of them don’t, but, more to the point, her unpreparedness will lead to many, many gaffes in unscripted situations over the next two months. The McCain campaign will try to limit those situations, but they can’t eliminate them.
(4) Finally, I think that, in the long run, the attack dog persona revealed in the speech will undercut her main positives, her personal story and hockey mom image.
And I’m assuming that the Enquirer story is 100% BS; if now … Katey bar the door, as they say. It will get really ugly for the McCain campaign.
Possibly, but I should note that opposition to a female candidate has gone down significantly since February. Back then, it was 17% overall. 18-29 year olds were not the most opposed at the time–20% said they were not willing–but their opposition has endured longer than any other age group’s opposition. It may be that Clinton’s campaign made the idea of a woman President seem more plausible and familiar to most people, but for some reason young voters are still somewhat more likely to find it unacceptable.
Weird. If Barack were Becky Obama, but otherwise unchanged, I’d vote for her without a qualm.
Maybe David Palmer broke more ground with my demographic than Glen Close.
I still think my first reaction was right. What I think we will see is the lack of a Republican post-convention bounce rather than any significant collapse in McCain’s support. It won’t be so much that McCain has driven away that many people with this choice as it will be that he failed to expand his coalition, despite the transparent goal of doing just that by choosing a woman. We should all hope that the Enquirer story is simply nonsense, because if it isn’t the Palin enthusiasm will end up looking much more foolish than it does right now.
I should have specified where the first survey came from. It was done for a Missouri paper, which may be an indication that McCain will continue to do well in Missouri and this may be an indication of national strength on the grounds that Missouri is a “bellwether” state. On the other hand, without seeing the complete crosstabs I am wary of attributing too much significance to that survey. If the McCain campaign believes the Midwest is where the election will be fought and won, and if they think Michigan is one of the states they can flip, I think the Free Press focus group should be very sobering for them. I stand by my earlier view that the campaign has probably forfeited really competing in the Midwest, and sending Palin to campaign in Midwestern exurbs and suburbs is not going to do the trick all by itself.
Correction: the link is to a Missouri paper, but the survey was a national one.
For some excellent background on Gov. Sarah Palin, here is an email letter written by a female resident of Wasilla, AK, who has known her rather well for a long time and seen her up close as the town’s mayor. It is clear and well written. The writer seems fair and is up front about where she is coming from in writing this. She has nothing to gain in writing it and probably something to lose, although not that much.
http://www.crosscut.com/politics-government/17341
Thanks for the link. I had seen some things excerpted from that, but I hadn’t taken the time to read all of it. The more one learns about how she governed, the more one realizes how perfectly she will fit in with the national GOP, and that is obviously not a compliment.