There’s no single reason that explains why Mike Huckabee polls so well, so consistently. Unlikely front-runner: Huck tops polls

Mike Huckabee is in a position most politicians would die for.

In the latest Gallup Poll released Friday, he’s the Republican leader, ahead of 16 other presidential prospects. Regardless of what’s being polled, who’s doing the polling or how the question is asked, among Republicans Huckabee typically finishes on top.


Who is best liked? Mike Huckabee.

Whom do Fox News viewers favor? Mike Huckabee.

Who does the South want to be president? Mike Huckabee.

Poll the early primary states, and the former Arkansas governor is winning. Match up any of the 2012 contenders with President Barack Obama, and Huckabee usually runs strongest.

For a potential candidate who doesn’t do a whole lot of actual campaigning — and who most insiders believe will not run for the White House — Huckabee occupies a surprisingly dominant position.

“Huckabee’s the only one of the top Republicans who has the combination of electability and base appeal it’s going to take to beat Barack Obama,” wrote Tom Jensen of the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling in January. “A lot will change over the course of 2011, but at least based on the information we have so far, Huckabee looks like the GOP’s best bet.”

There’s no single reason that explains why Huckabee polls so well, so consistently.

He has run for president before, but so has former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who doesn’t perform nearly as well in the polls. Some point to Huckabee’s nonthreatening persona and sunny demeanor. Others see his placement in a unique position at the intersection of conservative politics, media and faith — a former preacher, Huckabee now hosts his own show on Fox — as the key to his polling success.

“His Fox News show really helps his name recognition,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “He’s a very genial person. He doesn’t seem to have a mean streak at all.”

Clearly, his upstart 2008 bid, a campaign in which he showed surprising staying power, unfolded in a way that left him in better shape than when he began.

“Huckabee does better because his 2008 run gave him decent name recognition and favorable ratings without the perceived negatives that appear to be limiting the appeal of the other better-known prospective GOP hopefuls,” said Mark Blumenthal, the editor of Pollster.com.

Still, despite the polling data — and despite the fact that Huckabee has topped nearly every survey of the 2012 Republican field since Barack Obama’s election — party insiders don’t view the former governor as the front-runner for the GOP nomination.

The knock is that Huckabee hasn’t shown any capacity to raise money at the level demanded by a presidential campaign and that there is no path to victory for a self-branded social issues warrior as long as the economy remains the dominant political issue.

“The skepticism in D.C. grows out of the fact that Gov. Huckabee did very well with social conservatives but not economic conservatives,” said Ayres. “And since economics dominate today, they are skeptical that he will be able to resonate.”

Many — including the media — started shorting Huckabee’s 2012 stock after the news broke that as governor he granted clemency to a man who in 2009 shot four cops in Washington state. Huckabee took a beating from conservatives after the shooting and still finds himself having to explain the decision.

More recently, Huckabee ran into turbulence for statements ranging from a remark that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” under the new health care law to claiming that Obama grew up “in Kenya” — the kind of wildly undisciplined rhetoric that serious presidential contenders tend to avoid.

The polls, however, suggest the public is forgiving: Huckabee’s numbers dipped only briefly after the Washington shootings, and the other incidents don’t appear to have damaged him. His negative ratings are remarkably low — even among Democratic voters and independents — for a politician who has been in the national spotlight for an extended period of time.

Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll, said that “the reason why he polls better than he does with Beltway pundits is that they see problems with him based on their knowledge of Huckabee.”

“They project how that will play down the road with the Republican electorate,” he said. “If we walked through a suburban shopping mall in Des Moines, I bet relatively few of the people we’d talk to are aware of Romney’s ties to health care in Massachusetts. Nor are they likely aware of Huckabee’s economics.”

Huckabee clearly loves his perch atop the polls.

He frequently points to his numbers to rebut interviewers who question how serious he is about running for president. So do his aides.

“Most polls reflect the voices of everyday hardworking people — while most news stories reflect the voices of the D.C. elite media, high-paid political consultants and political pundits,” said Hogan Gidley, HuckPAC’s executive director. “Should Gov. Huckabee decide to run for president in 2012, he will be the front-runner — regardless of what the D.C. press or political pundits think about it.”