Sarah Palin's popularity has always been a myth

Sarah Palin's percentages appear to be slipping fast. In a straw poll at the 2011 CPAC, Sarah Palin came in 9th place, with only 3% of the votes.

Ron Paul – 30 percent
Mitt Romney – 23 percent
Gary Johnson – 6 percent
Chris Christie – 6 percent
Newt Gingrich – 5 percent
Tim Pawlenty – 4 percent
Michele Bachmann – 4 percent
Mitch Daniels – 4 percent
Sarah Palin – 3 percent
Herman Cain – 2 percent
Mike Huckabee – 2 percent
Rick Santorum – 2 percent
John Thune – 2 percent
Jon Huntsman – 1 percent
Haley Barbour – 1 percent
Other – 5 percent
Undecided –1 percent

Last year Sarah Palin came came 3rd, with 7% of the total votes:

Ron Paul - 31 percent
Mitt Romney - 22 percent
Sarah Palin - 7 percent
Tim Pawlenty - 6 percent
Newt Gingrich - 4 percent
Mike Huckabee - 4 percent
Mike Pence - 5 percent
Sen. John Thune - 2 percent
Mitch Daniels - 2 percent
Rick Santorum - 2 percent
Hailey Barbour - 1 percent
Other - 5 percent
Undecided - 6 percent

The CPAC straw polls are popularity contests among fellow Republicans and are different from an actual election, of course. Let's have a look at the election results that placed Sarah Palin in office.

Sarah Palin received 48.33% of the vote in the election for governor, 114,697 votes. That's based on the number of people who voted, but it represents only 22% of the total number of people entitled to vote. Only 47% of people elligible to vote actually bothered to cast their ballots.



Wasilla had 5,469 inhabitants in 2000. Sarah Palin was elected mayor in 1996 and re-elected in 1999. Based on the number of inhabitants above, of the people elligible to vote, only 20% voted in 1996 and 22% in 1999.

Sarah Palin's enormous popularity and highest approval rate of all governors around the country, as stated by the McCain campaign in 2008, is simply a myth. It's easy to spin anything based on the figures above if they're taken out of context of the reality regarding politics in Alaska.

A great number of people live in remote, isolated areas and even those who live in not so remote areas don't have much of a clue about politics in Alaska, nor are they interested in it. Here's a first hand account of some reactions to Sarah Palin's resignation. The people in question don't live in the isolation of the western or northern parts of the state, but in a well known town in the Prince William Sound area.

I walked around with a shirt I made the day after she quit, that said "Dude where's my Governor" inside an outline of Alaska that was blue and gold, the colors of our flag. For a full 2 months I had people who live here asking me what that was about. They had NO idea the woman had quit. That just goes to show how little people pay attention to what's going on in politics here.

Sarah Palin appears to be popular up and down the country. Everything she says or does is reported by the media because it sells. This may give the illusion of popularity.

I wouldn't say she's incredibly popular in the nice sense of the word. But I'll admit that she's extremely colourful... so is Lindsay Lohan.

It's been reported that Sarah Pac has hired a shiny new chief-of-staff, Michael Glassner. Is she going to run? My cynical mind tells me that this move has more to do with money than any actual plans to announce her candidacy. Her chances of securing the nomination as the GOP candidate appear to be minimal. Why not keep the donations coming in until the last possible moment? Unless she has plans for a third party run, which I don't believe would deliver her the big prize anyway...

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Has the shooting in Arizona and Sarah Palin's "blood libel"reaction affected her chances of winning the Republican nomination for President?

By Kathleen

Despite Sarah Palin’s apparent crash and burn absurd "blood libel" reference controversy and her subsequent defense/attack, "I am a victim and so are you" interview with Hannity, Palin still ranks as one of the top three in a recent survey carried out from January 13 to 17 by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal - conducted several days after the Arizona shooting, which happened on January 8. Sarah Palin's "blood libel speech" happened on January 12, one day before the polling started for this survey.

The survey included questions that were to be addressed only to Republican or strict Independents with regard to a list of people who might seek the GOP nomination for President in the upcoming primaries for the 2012 Elections. In the survey, Romney ranks first at 19%, closely followed by Huckabee at 18%, and Palin polling at 14%. I have included the full poll results because the findings are interesting. There is a significant gap between the top three and the fourth placed and fifth placed preferences, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. However, the primaries are a year away and there is still a lot of time for such gaps to be closed or for new candidate names to become more prominent.

Haley Barbour’s name makes an appearance but Michelle Bachmann is not mentioned by name despite the recent chatter that she is considering a run for the Presidency herself. Bachmann is a native of Iowa, raised in Cedar Falls, who yesterday delivered a keynote speech at a fundraiser for Iowans for Tax Relief PAC in Des Moines in which she intimated that she is proud that none of her children are in jail right now, waxed lyrical on American exceptionalism and the “thunder cloud of debt” that America presently faces.

The Iowans for Tax Relief Pac is headed by Ed Failor Jnr and access to its 55,000 member list is much desired by those considering mounting a campaign for the Presidency. I think that it is worth pointing out that some consider that a better name for the Iowans for Tax Relief Pac would be Iowans for Special Interest Loopholes and High Rates because despite its name the group supports special interest and corporate tax subsidies which it is thought result in tax rises for the majority. Bachman says that she would like to see a similar Pac set up in her own state of Minnesota.

On page 17 of this very comprehensive survey we find the opinions about some of the potential Republican nominees:

That Sarah Palin’s name still appears in the top three amongst Republican and Independent voters must drive to distraction those in the GOP and others who insist that she has “done herself in” due to her deaf like response to the Gabby Giffords shooting. And it should, because despite the repudiation of the violent imagery which her 2010 campaign used and the rejection of her as a victim by many these latest figures show that she clearly still maintains the strong support of the right wing base and that this support is unlikely to change.

Sarah Palin is a divisive personality who engages in extreme rhetoric as a matter of course. There is a significant number of very angry voters in the USA who feel disenfranchised because they feel that neither the Republicans nor the Democratic Party represent them. They feel disenchanted with both parties because they have lost their homes, their jobs or even both. They can see no solutions. Those angry voters will gravitate naturally to the loudest angry voice during the primaries. That voice looks like it will be Palins. That she is quiet now is the lull before the storm.

Please don't get me wrong: I am of course well aware that the chances that Sarah Palin would win a presidential election against Barack Obama are very slim. However, it has to be noted that the shooting in Arizona and Sarah Palin's controversial reaction do not appear to have had any impact on her overall "negative" ratings, as the following chart shows. On page 5 of the survey, we are told that there is a significant drop in the "very positive rating", but the overall "negative" ratings haven't changed at all:

Therefore, the comparison between the positive/negative ratings for Sarah Palin in this survey from January 2011 is virtually identical to the ratings by the same pollsters from December 2010, which Palingates previously reported.

January 2011:

December 2010:

The notion that the shooting in Arizona and Sarah Palin's reaction to it have damaged her chances to win the Republican primaries is not supported by this survey.

Anyone declaring victory at this point in the fight against Sarah Palin might be in for a very unpleasant surprise.

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Sarah Palin's popularity - The Myth

When John McCain launched Sarah Palin on the national stage, much was said about her popularity ratings.

How does one measure popularity in a state so huge and so sparsely populated as Alaska?

Our good friend Barb Dwyer gave us a good first-hand account regarding the peculiarities of the electorate in Alaska:

There's a few things to consider here. It's true she did bluff her way into office in a way, it was more of I won't say anything other than I'm Republican and I'm NOT Frank Murkowski. She dodged interviews, dodged debates, dodged just about anything where she would have to speak. She was in awe of her opponents knowledge but admitted to Andrew Halcro that she thought that when it came to your average voter, knowledge of facts and figures just doesn't matter. In Alaska more than anywhere else this is probably true. People just don't pay attention as a whole for a wide variety of reasons. Distrust of Government in general, really bad TV coverage, even worse newpapers and the fact that many people watch or read neither. This is a state that continues to try and elect Ted Stevens and Don Young no matter how much criminal activity they may be involved with. We also have, I believe, 11 other legislators currently sitting in Federal prisons with more on the way. Most I'm sure could be re-elected when they are released. It really is that pathetic. So another crook running for a high position is business as usual up here.

When a person says they are pregnant, people believe them. There's no reason really to question someone and especially when your Governor tells you this. People just thought, well that's weird and went about their business. I watch our horrible new broadcasts all the time and I would bet that over the period she said she was pregnant, I saw her on TV maybe 3 times. She always sends her spokesmen and department heads to do her talking for her. People would question that aspect and wonder why she couldn't speak for herself but that's how she did it. She was always very elusive, hell the legislature couldn't even find her half the time. There were bumper stickers all over Juneau saying "Sarah the jobs in Juneau" because she was always hiding out eating crunch wraps.

The only reason her ratings were so high is because she essentially bribed her constituents with the energy rebate checks. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. She was widely disliked after announcing AGIA and that would not have looked good for her VP nod. So being the socialist that she is, she sent everyone in the state a check for $1,200 and the people danced with glee. Then they took that poll that everyone refers to right after everyone got home from purchasing their new plasma TV and they all loved the Governor who gave them free money. She was running a con game and a shell game all at the same time, knowing the low information voters of this state would stay oblivious to most, if not all of what was going on. She had the ADN in her back pocket (they had a shrine to her online) and that's really all she needed to pull off all of her shenanigans.

I walked around with a shirt I made the day after she quit, that said "Dude where's my Governor" inside an outline of Alaska that was blue and gold, the colors of our flag. For a full 2 months I had people who live here asking me what that was about. They had NO idea the woman had quit. That just goes to show how little people pay attention to what's going on in politics here.

The distances also play into the equation. I remember when MSNBC went out to Little Diomede to show the only place in Alaska you can see an island that belongs to Russia. They asked the Mayor if Sarah had ever been there and he replied that she hadn't. His next question was why was this news crew way out in Little Diomede. They had to inform him that SP had been given the VP nod. The Mayor of Little Diomede had no idea she had been tapped for that position. News travels slow up here if it gets anywhere at all. It's just the reality of this state. Could she have pulled this off anywhere else? I seriously doubt it.

Alaska has a tiny population. According to the 2008 census, there are 686,293 people spread over 586,412 square miles, or 1.17 inhabitants per square mile.

Sarah Palin received 48.33% of the vote in the election for governor, 114,697 votes. That's based on the number of people who voted, but it represents only 22% of the total number of people entitled to vote.

Wasilla had 5,469 inhabitants in 2000. Sarah Palin was elected mayor in 1996 and re-elected in 1999. Based on the number of inhabitants above, of the people elligible to vote, only 20% voted in 1996 and 22% in 1999.

Let's have a look at the actual figures on all three occasions.



During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mike Huckabee said Sarah Palin had more votes in the mayoral poll than Joe Biden had in the primaries. Biden had 63,157 votes, which is a bit higher than 909...

It doesn't seem too difficult to reach a high percentage of the votes in a place like Alaska. People are scattered all over the place, in very isolated, remote areas. Of the 506,485 people elligible to vote, only 47% actually voted in 2006 (the figures may be slightly out, as they're based on a 2008 census estimate).

The same would hold true for popularity ratings. The samples would not reflect the state as a whole. A bribe of $1,200 surely helped improve things a bit.

The figures we've seen above hardly indicate overwhelming popularity or unbridled enthusiasm for Sarah Palin.

John McCain helped perpetuate the myth when he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate.



Although they lost the election, the damage was done. McCain unleashed this nightmare that is Sarah Palin, she went rogue and the rest is history.

Her so-called popularity in her own state was seriously damaged and her ratings plummeted after November 2008, culminating in her resignation from the office of governor in July 2009.

Granny Grifter has replaced the supporters she had in Alaska with shiny new $upporters from the Lower 48. That could have been one of her motives for quitting... a fresh supply of $upporter$!
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