Poll Finds Lack of Passion for Republican Candidates By JIM RUTENBERG
With less than a year to go before the Iowa caucuses,
Republican voters have yet to form strong opinions about most of their potential candidates for president in 2012, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Only those possible contenders who regularly appear on television — or have made bids before — are well known enough to elicit significant views from their fellow Republicans. And of that group, only one, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, is viewed favorably by more than half of the Republican electorate.
The poll would seem to reflect the late start to the Republican primary season, with many of the major likely candidates seeking to hoard their money and avoid making any missteps that they might have to live with later, when voters go to polls or caucus rooms.
While it may not be unusual for voters’ attention to be focused elsewhere at this stage of a campaign, the survey at the very least provides a reality check for a race that has received frenetic coverage at times on cable news and the Internet even though nearly 60 percent of Republicans cannot point to a single candidate about whom they are enthusiastic, according to the Times/CBS poll.
A host of potential Republican candidates have a lot of work ahead — and money to spend — to make themselves better known to their party faithful and other Americans.
For instance, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota may be drawing media attention as a Republican presidential contender, but nearly 80 percent of Republican respondents to the Times/CBS poll said they did not know enough about him to say whether they viewed him favorably or unfavorably (20 percent say they view him positively and 3 percent say they view him negatively).
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi may be well known along the corridors of K Street — where he was once a lobbyist — and among Washington-based reporters who covered him as a one-time Republican Party chairman. But 85 percent of Republican voters said they did not know enough about him to offer an opinion.
Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who is stepping down as ambassador to China, might take heart that five times as many party members view him favorably as view him unfavorably. But that is just it: literally 5 percent of Republican poll respondents said they viewed him favorably, 1 percent said they viewed him unfavorably and more than 90 percent said they had nothing to say either way because they had not heard enough about him.
Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota; Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania drew similar responses.
Sarah Palin, the one-time vice-presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska — who is a regular on Fox News, which the survey said was the television news network most watched by Republicans — is the best known of the possible candidates, according to the poll. She is viewed the least favorably by the general public: Twice as many respondents over all said they had an unfavorable view of her (55 percent) as said they had a favorable view (26 percent).
But her standing among Republican respondents was the polar opposite: About half of Republicans said they viewed her favorably; 26 percent said they viewed her unfavorably.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, was not far behind her in terms of name recognition. Among all American voters, he is viewed slightly more positively than negatively, with 28 percent expressing favorable views and 24 percent expressing unfavorable views. Among the poll’s Republican voters, 42 percent said they viewed him favorably and 15 percent said they viewed him unfavorably.
The poll was taken nationally Friday through Wednesday with interviews of 1,116 registered voters and 524 registered Republicans. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all voters and plus or minus four percentage points for Republican voters.
Over all, it showed that Republicans who are considering making presidential bids will have to woo a party that largely identifies with the Tea Party movement — more than half of Republican voters said they considered themselves Tea Party supporters — and has questions about President Obama’s origin of birth.
A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.
While that might indicate that there is a receptive audience for the real estate mogul Donald J. Trump as he raises questions about Mr. Obama’s citizenship, the poll also pointed to potential roadblocks for him should he pursue a formal candidacy. Mr. Trump has been getting considerable attention as a possibly strong contender, but
just about as many Republicans view him favorably as view him unfavorably — 35 percent favorably and 32 percent unfavorably — and nearly 60 percent of Republicans interviewed said they did not believe he was a serious candidate. (Far more of all voters view him unfavorably — 46 percent — than view him favorably, 25 percent.) If one Republican stands out in the Times/CBS News poll, it is Mr. Huckabee, who has his own show on the Fox News Channel. Roughly a third of all voters view him favorably, as opposed to a quarter who view him unfavorably. And among Republican voters, more than half view him positively as opposed to 11 percent who have negative views.
“Watching Huckabee on TV gives me a good idea of how he views things,” Floyd Petersen, a disabled contractor in Thompson Falls, Mont., said in a follow-up interview. “TV has made me know him better.”
When Republicans were asked whom they were most enthusiastic about, Mr. Huckabee was the second-most-mentioned candidate, after Mr. Romney. But the percentages were small: 8 percent named Mr. Huckabee, 9 percent named Mr. Romney and 57 percent could not name anyone.
How well a candidate is known at this stage of a campaign is not necessarily a reflection of where they will stand when the race engages in earnest. For instance, at this point four years ago, 77 percent of Republicans surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News said they did not know enough about Mr. Romney to form an opinion of him. Yet he was one of the better-known candidates by the time he dropped out in February 2008.
And the best-known and best-liked candidate at the time of that poll — taken in March 2007 — was former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, whose campaign ultimately fizzled. As the candidates go about building their organizations and raising money this time around, voters seem content to wait until the first caucuses and primaries get closer before solidifying their opinions.
“Right now. there is not one of the potential Republican candidates that I would be enthusiastic about even if they came out definitely,” John Pollard, a retired deputy sheriff of Tacoma, Wash., said in a follow-up interview. “I’m going to wait and see who runs when we get into the primaries.”
Marina Stefan contributed reporting. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/politics/22republicans.html?_r=1&hp
