Some political observers believe Palin has been hurt by presenting herself to the public in the decidedly unpresidential context of a reality show.
Reporting on each new poll that throws cold water on Sarah Palin's chances as a presidential candidate may be starting to sound like it's piling on. But not only has CNN/Opinion Research survey shown that big percentages of the general public don't look kindly on a Palin candidacy, the poll finds that she makes the worst showing among fellow Republicans when compared to potential GOP contenders considered for the moment to be in the top tier.
The new CNN poll says that President Barack Obama's standing with Democrats for their 2012 nomination is improving, while Tea Party champion Palin has lost ground to fellow potential Republican candidates Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
There are a lot of theories as to why the shine of Palin-mania has lost is gloss, but one that appears to be holding the most credibility says that as the public as gotten to know her better, they like her less.
In a recent episode of her new reality television show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Palin shot and killed a moose. The image of her standing over a dead animal lying in blood-stained snow was not an attractive backdrop for the former beauty queen.
And, there is a growing chorus of doubts about Palin's fitness to run for president among influential conservative pundits and even a few politicians.
It’s not at all hard to imagine that criticism of Palin from the likes of conservative politicos Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove on Fox can, over time, have an effect on poll numbers. So these two trends seem related.
The poll further found that despite being upset with Obama over his tax-cut compromise earlier, nearly 78 percent of Democrats want Obama as their nominee in 2012, while only 19 percent of Democrats want someone else.
Palin, however, has lost 18 points in Republican support in the last two years, with 49 percent of Republicans now saying they would be likely to support her for the nomination in 2012, the poll claims.
Two-thirds of Republicans questioned say they would likely support Huckabee as their nominee in 2012. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans say they would likely support Romney. That number drops to 54 percent for Gingrich.
Fifty-one percent of Republicans who were surveyed in the poll conducted Dec. 17-19 said they were not very likely or not likely at all to support Palin if she decided to run compared to 49 percent who said they'd back her. That's a turnaround from December 2008, right in the wake of the just-ended presidential campaign, when 67 percent said they'd be likely to support a Palin run while 33 percent would not. There was more unencouraging news for Palin about the sentiments of Republicans follows a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted Dec. 9-12 that said 59 percent of all Americans ruled out backing Palin for president. Palin's problems with the general electorate were also evident in surveys conducted over the last two months in 10 states by Public Policy Polling, which found that voters in every one of them held an unfavorable opinion of her. PPP said that an average 56 percent of voters saw her unfavorably in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia, which it viewed as key to GOP chances in the 2012 presidential race. One of Palin's worst showings was in her home state of Alaska where 58 percent regarded her unfavorably.