Experience Argument Hurting Palin And The Other Dude

by DemFromCT

More polling on the 'women's vote', previously documented to not be breaking vicePresident Palin's way. A new poll supports the idea you can like someone and not vote for them. Pre-speech, an EMILY's List poll:

Women voters remain unswayed by the Republican choice of anti-abortion, devout Christian Sarah Palin for vice president, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

White House hopeful John McCain electrified his party's conservative base by naming Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five and Alaska governor, as his running mate on Friday.

But 52 percent of voters polled in a survey for the women's activist group Emily's List said they would vote for the Democrat ticket of Barack Obama and his VP choice Joseph Biden, against 41 for the Republicans.

The gimmicky part of the pick seems clear:

The poll, carried out by random dialing of 800 women on Sunday and Monday, shows that 50 percent of women voters felt McCain picked Palin out of political expediency and not because he believes she has the experience to do the job.

Only 29 percent said he had picked her to run in the November 4 elections because he believed she was qualified to be vice president.

It's the reversal of the experience numbers that's startling:

And when asked which ticket had the most experience to run the country, 52 percent opted for the Democrats compared to 37 percent for the Republicans.

Obama, a young senator from Illinois, has been under fire for months from Republicans for his perceived lack of government experience compared to McCain, a Vietnam veteran who has worked in Congress for more than two decades.

In a similar poll conducted in August, McCain had a 35 point lead over Obama, said Geoff Garin, from pollsters Garin-Hart-Yang.

"To lose the experience argument is really devastating for the McCain campaign. Not just now but over the long haul in the next two months," Garin said.

Nothing in the red-meat-for-conservatives speech addressed that, but then again nothing in her resume does, either.

I can understand why Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan thought this wasn't going to fly.

Other points of interest:

• Some 45 percent of Clinton fans thought Palin was not very attractive as a candidate, and 55 percent said they would not be voting for McCain.
• Only nine percent of Clinton supporters said they thought they would vote Republican because Palin was on the ticket.
• sked which ticket understood better the issues and concerns which are important to women, 53 percent opted for the Obama-Biden ticket compared to 35 percent for McCain and Palin.

More here.

^{On behalf of EMILY's List, Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group conducted a national survey among 800 women voters to assess their reactions to and perceptions of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Interviewing was conducted on August 31 and September 1, 2008. The margin of error for the findings is +/- 3.5 percentage points.}