Saturday, March 17, 2007

Candidates People Won't Vote For

Zogby has a new poll asking people who would never get their vote. The results:

Newt Gingrich--53%

Hillary Clinton--46%

Al Gore--43%

Mitt Romney--39%

John Edwards--33%

Barak Obama--33%

John McCain--32%

Rudolph Giuliani--31%

This poses a real problem for Hillary Clinton, IMO. If almost half of Americans will not vote for her, that means almost half the electorate are beyond the reach of her message. John Edwards and Barak Obama, however, have low enough negatives to be electable.

On the other hand, fewer people seem to have written off Republican candidates. Newt Gingrich isn't in the race yet, and none of the announced candidates have insurmountable negatives. This sort of flies in the face of conventional knowledge (at least from the left) that Americans are tired of Republicans and want to elect a Democrat.

It's still way too early in this race to be coronating any candidate. Personally, I'm not excited about any of the Republican candidates, but I won't be voting for a Democrat. Did such personal politics figure into how people responded to this poll?