When Sarah Palin endorsed Karen Handel prior to the July 20 Republican primary, Handel embraced that support and has been attached at the hip to Palin – metaphorically speaking – ever since.
When Barack Obama makes a visit to Atlanta next Monday, Democratic nominee Roy Barnes will travel as far from the capital city as he can to avoid any kind of contact with the president.
Handel ran to Palin, the most popular figure in her party. Barnes is running away from Obama, the dominant political figure in his party.
Which strategy is smarter? Time may tell us that Barnes is making the wiser decision here.
While Obama could obviously help motivate black voters to turn out at the polls this fall, he also is extraordinarily unpopular in Georgia with the kinds of moderate and conservative white voters whose support Barnes is trying to get. To have any hopes of hanging on to the votes of Georgia-style independents, Barnes can’t afford to be seen anywhere near Obama.
There is growing evidence that Palin, the former half-term governor of Alaska, has that same kind of polarizing influence on independent voters who are not diehard Republicans.
Public Policy Polling conducted a survey in New Hampshire after Palin endorsed Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte in the U.S. Senate race and found that Ayotte’s support among independents was collapsing:
The Palin endorsement may well be playing a role in this. 51% of voters in the state say they’re less likely to back a Palin endorsed candidate to only 26% who say that support would make them more inclined to vote for someone. Among moderates that widens to 65% who say a Palin endorsement would turn them off to 14% who it would make more supportive.
A recent Gallup poll found that same negative response to Palin on the national level. Gallup was comparing public attitudes towards the five major Republican presidential prospects: Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal.
While Palin enjoyed a 76 percent favorable rating among Republicans in that Gallup poll, her numbers dropped dramatically when non-Republicans were added to the mix.
Said Gallup:
Palin is the best known of the five to all Americans, but with a decidedly mixed image: 44% rate her favorably and 47% unfavorably . . . Palin was catapulted into national prominence as the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, and has been highly visible since — with her visibility fueled by a best-selling memoir, continuing appearances on television, and speculation about her political future. Her image was generally more positive than negative during most of the 2008 campaign, but has tilted more negative last year and this year.
Greg Sargent summed it up well in this Washington Post blog item:
The pattern is becoming overwhelmingly obvious. Palin’s current role of celebrity quasi-candidate works for her. It’s allowed her to insulate herself from direct media cross-examination and to communicate directly to the Palin Nation hordes, who remain as transfixed as ever. But the rest of the world continues to find her more and more distasteful, and it’s growing less likely that she’ll succeed if she ever steps outside the bubble she’s crafted for herself.
This would all suggest that while Palin’s endorsement obviously provided Karen Handel with a big boost among Republicans voting in her party primary, it might not be such a good thing in a general election where a candidate also needs to draw support from independent voters in the middle. If Handel wins the Republican nomination in the runoff, she may find that the Palin endorsement has become not a life preserver, but a cement block around her neck.
