{"id":7976,"date":"2006-07-19T13:23:18","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T17:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7976.html"},"modified":"2006-07-19T13:23:18","modified_gmt":"2006-07-19T17:23:18","slug":"do-four-in-10-republicans-really-find-mccain-unacceptable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/do-four-in-10-republicans-really-find-mccain-unacceptable\/","title":{"rendered":"Do four in 10 Republicans really find McCain unacceptable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think there’s something wrong with this new Gallup poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new [tag]Gallup[\/tag] [tag]poll[\/tag] asking Americans theirs views of 25 leading candidates for president in 2008 found that one of the Republican frontrunners, Sen. [tag]John McCain[\/tag], is judged “[tag]unacceptable[\/tag]” by 41% of those in his own party.<\/p>\n

A bare majority, 55%, find him “[tag]acceptable[\/tag].” In contrast, 73% of Republicans give their okay to rival Rudy [tag]Giuliani[\/tag]. Condoleezza [tag]Rice[\/tag] got the thumb’s up from 68%.<\/p>\n

Most of the opposition to McCain comes from conservatives, possibly explaining his moves in that direction lately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A lot of people are picking up on this poll because of the surprisingly strong opposition McCain seems to be facing from Republicans. And, to be sure, if 41% of Republicans have already decided that McCain is “unacceptable,” before campaigning even begins, that would be pretty interesting.<\/p>\n

But a closer look<\/a> at the numbers suggests a whole lot of people, on both sides of the aisle, have already made up their minds about a lot of candidates. So much so that the poll itself doesn’t make a lot of sense.
\n
\nIn theory, I think the idea behind the poll is a good one. Regardless of whether a candidate is a voter’s personal favorite, asking whether he or she is “acceptable” gauges a broader level of interest. As Gallup’s press release explained, “Unlike other nomination ballot questions that measure respondents’ first choice from among a list of possible candidates, this question paints a broader picture of the level of potential support and opposition for each candidate.”<\/p>\n

That sounds like a good idea. The problem is, according to Gallup’s poll, most people have already ruled out most candidates, including a series of candidates with whom they are likely unfamiliar.<\/p>\n

Look at the Republicans, for example. According to Gallup, more than 40% of GOP voters have already decided that McCain (41%), Gingrich (50%), Jeb Bush (52%), Frist (42%), Cheney (61%), Pataki (51%), Romney (42%), Huckabee (40%), and Brownback (43%) are all “unacceptable.”<\/p>\n

On the other side of the aisle, more than 40% of Dems have already decided that Kerry (40%), Clark (49%), Dean (54%), Daschle (50%), Feingold (41%), Warner (42%), Kucinich (51%), and Vilsack (47%) are also all “unacceptable.”<\/p>\n

That hardly seems possible. I’d love to believe that so many people are so engaged in the 2008 election that they’ve already started making up their minds about who is and isn’t the kind of candidate they could consider supporting, but a lot of these candidates’ names are hardly recognizable to the typical voter. I suspect most rank-and-file Republicans barely know who Mike Huckabee is, so how could 40% of them already know that he’s “unacceptable”? Mark Warner is just starting to register in name ID surveys, and already 42% of Dems have decided he’s not an acceptable candidate?<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting idea for a poll, but I’m not buying it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think there’s something wrong with this new Gallup poll. A new [tag]Gallup[\/tag] [tag]poll[\/tag] asking Americans theirs views of 25 leading candidates for president in 2008 found that one of the Republican frontrunners, Sen. [tag]John McCain[\/tag], is judged “[tag]unacceptable[\/tag]” by 41% of those in his own party. A bare majority, 55%, find him “[tag]acceptable[\/tag].” In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}