PPP: Huckabee and Palin leading in Missouri

[Mr. Morden]

This is great news....for Mitt Romney.

10% in North Carolina
12% in Montana
14% in Missouri

Can any Romney hack try to pass these numbers off as good news.  He'd be ok if he was cleaning up in the 2008 Obama states but he's not.  He's only doing so in some, but not all, of the 2008 Obama blue states.

Good showing by Palin in a state that borders the Huckabee strongholds of Iowa and Arkansas.  Iowa probably is not too different from Missouri right now.

None of these states vote especially early, so I'm not too worried. Iowa would be more useful, but Romney has strong leads in Nevada and New Hampshire, two early states. He also is expected to be leading in Michigan, another early state.

Michigan's 2008 primary law made it a one-time thing.  In 2012, it reverts back to the last Tuesday of February.  Tentatively, for example, Missouri's primary is set for Feb. 7 (which would currently be Super Tuesday), three weeks before Michigan:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128721.0

Of course, there'll be a lot of movement of primary dates in the next few months, so we don't really know for sure yet.

[Mr. Morden]

who leads among:

moderates: Huckabee / Palin tie
conservatives: Huckabee
men: Palin
women: Huckabee
under 30: Huckabee
30-45: Palin
over 45: Huckabee

[Mr. Morden]

men: Palin
women: Huckabee

I know this has been said before but how come this is so? I mean, it's...interesting.

Well, three obvious reasons:

- Huckabee appeals to the kind of voters who want to vote for the "Identity politics candidate for Evangelicals", whereas Palin appeals more to "movement conservatives".  Women are more likely to be over represented in the former group and men in the latter group.

- Huckabee is more congenial, and Palin is more combative.

- Men like Palin's body.

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There really isn't *that* much difference between "conservatives" and "moderates" in most of these GOP primary polls.  Though that might change once the campaign starts for real, and divisions arise.

[Mr. Morden]

My gut feeling is women as a group aren't as hardline on social conservatism, a la Laura Bush, Meghan McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Republican women who get into politics, like Kay Bailey Hutchison, are very unrepresentative of Republican women voters as a whole.  Most surveys actually show that religiosity is a bit higher among women than men.  My guess is that socially conservative positions of the type favored by an Evangelical identity politics candidate like Huckabee (such as on abortion and gay marriage) are as popular with Republican women as Republican men.  (Though yes, the tone with which you advocate such positions could matter.)

But "movement conservatives" put somewhat more emphasis on economics and foreign policy, and on social issues with less of a religious connotation, like immigration.  Among movement conservatives, I suspect there's a bigger gap between men and women.

[Mr. Morden]

Would anyone abject to just assuming Utah will go for Romney and filling it in now lol?

Well, there are polls from other polling firms besides PPP from earlier in the year, which you could include if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_Republican_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2012

Mason Dixon did a Utah poll in April, which had Romney at 73%, and Palin in second with 9%.  I'm guessing that even if the margin has narrowed, he's still ahead.

[Mr. Morden]

Not to mention Palin's big flaws- is she serious, smart enough etc?- are extremely well exposed questions and she withstands them for polling w/in MOE of lead.  Huckabee, Gingrich and Romney: their Achilles Heels (pardons, RomneyCare, messy personal life) are, I'd guess, currently known by less than 10% of voters.

I don't know.  I think Palin's biggest liability is the fact that she quit halfway through her first term for no good reason.  I think she'd struggle to explain that one away, and I'd be curious to know exactly what percentage of voters actually even know about that.

With regard to her other apparent "gaffes", that stuff is being glossed over on the Right right now, while she's pitted against Democrats.  It's not clear to me how it would all play in a race in which she's running against other Republicans.

Anyway, I think it's important to keep the current polls in perspective.  It is *really* early.  Polls in places like Missouri or California or whatever don't mean much of anything yet.  The trends with different demographic groups are interesting, but that's about it.  IMHO, with polls this far out, you just ask "Is anyone ahead by like 30 points everywhere?  No?  OK, then don't worry about the polls yet."

[Mr. Morden]

I'm sloppily assuming IA resembles MO.

I would definitely *not* assume that, given that Huckabee and Romney campaigned there for like a year.  Iowa is likely to already have a much better-formed opinion of them than Missouri.