Huckabee Bests Palin and Romney, Leads in 2012 Poll Against Barack Obama
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 22, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee fares the best against pro-abortion President Barack Obama in a polling of voters previewing potential 2012 presidential election matchups. This is the first time in the PPP poll that any of the potential candidates has led Obama.
The Public Policy Polling firm, which is Democratic by respected for fairly accurate results, found Obama trails a pro-life opponent for the first time.
Huckabee has a 45-44 advantage over Obama, aided largely by a 44-38 lead with independents.
The former governor’s 35/29 favorability breakdown, with 35 percent of all voters saying they have a favorable view of him and 29 percent saying an unfavorable one, is actually slightly better than it was in November.
Mitt Romney does the next best against the pro-abortion president, trailing Obama 44-42. His favorability is 36/32 and he’s the most popular Republican among independents (41/32).
PPP says Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is also viewed more favorable by the Republican voters he needs to secure the GOP nomination.
"Romney actually matches Huckabee with GOP voters this month and gets over 50%, ending a trend in his numbers that had seemed to spell difficulty for snagging a Republican nomination," the firm indicates.
The polling firm says Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, comes in third of the top three Republicans who could challenge Obama.
Palin trails Obama 49-41 largely because she loses 14% of the Republican vote to him, making her the only one of the GOP candidates PPP tested who Obama could get double digit Republican crossover support against.
At the same time, Palin continues to be the most well liked potential GOP candidate within her party- at 71% favorability.
"Her problem appears to be that the Republicans who don’t care for her will go so far as to vote for Obama instead of her," PPP says.
Ultimately, the fact that Huckabee gives Republicans their first lead against Obama in any previous PPP poll since he took over the White House should give him a cause for concern, the firm notes.
"Is it a big deal that Barack Obama trails Mike Huckabee by a single point in January 2010? Not really- we’re mostly doing this poll every month so that we can have the tracking data over time," the firm concludes. "But it does reflect the reality that Obama has work to do in winning back over some of the folks who voted for him in 2008."
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