I found this most interesting survey on the excellent political site at http://www.electoral-vote.com/index.html (The text is from the site, not from me. The election is 41 months away, and already I am finding it fascinating.) "Net favorable" means the poll results of positive ratings minus negative ratings. Potential candidate Net Favorable # of Polls Condoleezza Rice +29% 1 Tim Pawlenty +5% 1 Rudy Guiliani +4% 2 Sarah Palin +2% 5 Mike Huckabee +1% 4 Bobby Jindal +1% 2 Mitt Romney -11% 3 Mitch McConnell -16% 2 John Boehner -21% 2 Newt Gingrich -23% 2 "What can we conclude from this list? There is no evidence Condoleezza Rice is interested in pursuing elective office and a black woman is probably a bridge too far for the Republicans in 2012 although a white woman (Sarah Palin) is a real possibility. Discounting Rice, that leaves Pawlenty as the most popular Republican out there, just slightly ahead of Rudy Giuliani, who conclusively demonstrated he knows nothing about running for President in 2008. He might run for governor of New York in 2010, but President in 2012 is inconceivable given his dismal performance in 2008. Jindal's reply to Obama's state-of-the-union speech shows he is not ready for prime time yet, and he has a gubernatorial election to deal only 2 months before the Iowa caucuses, so he'll have to wait until 2016. Thus Pawlenty, Palin, Huckabee, and the ever-ambitious Mitt Romney look like the main players at this moment (plus perhaps Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina), but as pointed out above, politicians with no plans now can suddenly develop plans if circumstances change. Pawlenty's withdrawal from the 2010 race undoubtedly has implications for what happens if the Minnesota Supreme Court says Al Franken won the Senate election. If Pawlenty's next election is a Republican primary, he may want to keep conservatives happy and dawdle about signing Franken's election certificate. On the other hand, if the court decision is unanimous and the justices really mean it, they could order him to sign the certificate within, say, 48 hours. If he refused point blank to do it, his primary opponents will scream that he has no respect for the law, definitely not a winner with conservatives. So the devil is in the details, as it often is "
John, these are interesting so I created a poll. I changed it to Presidential instead of Republican because....you're on the list and I did not want to make assumptions. VOTE HERE
Virginia's democratic primary is Tuesday. We have 3 contenders for the democratic nomination for Governor. The nice thing about Virginia (although some could argue otherwise) is that we have open primaries. While this really doesn't directly affect the presidential election, I do believe that who wins the various state elections in the next few years will have a big impact. Back during the bid for POTUS in 2008, Newsweek did an article about Virginia's two possibilities: Mark Warner and George Allen. The interesting thing is that George Allen made some major boo boos and lost his Senate seat, and then Mark Warner ended up picking up a Senate seat. Yet neither ran for president. Looks like Newsweek was a bit off -Matt
It's too early for this. Obama has been President for less than 5 months. Looking 3 1/2 or 7 1/2 years years out, the biggest single variable is going to be the Democratic regime's perceived success or failure. More particularly, its continued abiity to hang onto and appeal to a majority of the 20% or so of swing voters in the center who don't automatically side with one party or the other. That remains to be seen. If the greedy speculative capitalism is tamed and the economy revives in a new and more socially responsible form, if Obama's charm-offensive with foreign dictators wins reconciliation and a tangible movement towards world peace, and if people are pleased with the coming wholesale redesign of healthcare and who knows what else, then he'll be reelected by a huge margin no matter who the Republicans run against him. But if the the economy doesn't revive, if quadrupling already obscene deficits and printing trillions of new dollars leads to currency collapse and hyper-inflation, if emboldened nuclear-armed tyrants start destablizing their neighborhoods while the US condemns and deplores but doesn't act, as America itself sinks into a fog of race/class/gender identity-politics conflict and recrimination, then pretty much every potential Republican contender's net positives are going to go up dramatically.
