A poll released late Monday puts Palin near the bottom of the heap in New Hampshire. Key 2012 early states cool to Palin

A new poll of New Hampshire voters is the latest in a string of surveys suggesting that if Sarah Palin chooses to run for president, she’ll struggle in the crucial early states.

The WMUR Granite State Poll released late Monday afternoon puts Palin close to the basement, trailing not just frontrunner Mitt Romney, but even the little-known former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. More daunting: She’s viewed unfavorably by a full 50 percent of likely Republican primary voters, compared to the 33 percent who view her favorably.


“If Palin wants to win here, and she’ll have to to get the nomination, she’ll have to focus completely on fiscal issues,” speculated University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew Smith, who conducted the Granite State poll. “And there’s no reason to think that would be enough — as the only ‘Republican’ less popular than her is the Donald.”

Veterans of presidential politics typically dismiss early national polling, in which Palin is, on average, running third behind Romney and Huckabee. But the participants in the 2012 race are keeping a close eye on the polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina—since they play a key role in shaping the presidential contest—and in all of them, Palin’s numbers are underwhelming.

In New Hampshire—a state she’s avoided and where even her boosters see her as a bad fit—Palin’s performance is especially weak.

The data suggests that, for all the press coverage she receives, Palin is not the GOP’s frontrunner by any empirical standard. Republican primary voters may share along with Palin a common contempt for liberals and the news media, but so far that’s not translating into actually support for her as a presidential candidate.

In all three states, Republican operatives and political pollsters repeated one word: Serious. The states take their early responsibilities seriously, they said, and don’t see Palin – with her shortened term as governor, her penchant for public snits and her reality show – as a serious candidate.

“These states take their responsibilities about picking out the nominee seriously,” said J. David Woodard, a Republican pollster and professor of political science at South Carolina’s Clemson University. “There’s a real concern about investing somebody with that office who they don’t feel has the gravitas.”

A detailed examination of Palin’s polling in the early going suggests that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the media splash of her late entry into the presidential caucuses and primaries would barely rock the electoral boat. While her endorsement is likely to be a key 2012 prize, pollsters and Republican operatives in the three states repeat the same mantra: Unusual numbers of Republican voters actively dislike her; and among the majority who like her, few think she can serve as president.

“She has a group of ardent supporters who seem to be outnumbered by a group of ardent detractors,” said Ann Selzer, whose Des Moines Register Iowa Poll is the state’s gold standard, of views of Palin among Republican primary voters. (It’s too early to survey likely caucus-goers, pollsters say.) “There’s concern that if she were to do well in Iowa that it would be difficult for her to win, and Republicans in Iowa want to win,” she said.

Selzer’s survey last summer found that a full 39 percent of Iowa GOP primary voters view Palin unfavorably, a higher number than dislike two other candidates with some tarnish in the state, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. She was viewed favorably by just 58 percent — a remarkable number for a conservative star in a survey of a group thought to be largely conservative Republican voters.

Another survey of the state last month, by the Democratic-oriented firm Public Policy Polling, put Palin’s support at 15 percent, half that of Huckabee (who also hasn’t made clear if he’ll seek the nomination). In that survey, the share of GOP primary voters viewing her unfavorably – 29 percent — was exceeded only by the share who dislike Rudy Giuliani, whose liberal social policies and decision to skip Iowa made him unpopular in the state.

Other surveys show similar results. According to a January poll from the Republican consulting firm Strategic National, Palin and Gingrich were in a statistical dead heat, with both drawing around 12 percent of caucus-goers. Huckabee drew 27.6 percent of the vote, with Romney at 18.5 percent. A poll conducted last summer by The Iowa Republican with the local GOP firm Concordia Group showed similar results — Huckabee in the lead, Romney four points behind and Gingrich drawing 14 percent. Palin drew 11 percent of the vote in that survey.

If Iowa is a challenge for Palin, New Hampshire is a disaster. There, Romney is king – Monday’s WMUR Granite State Poll gave him 40 percent of the primary vote. A series of PPP polls taken last summer and fall put his lead over Palin at almost 30 points, with the former Alaska governor and Huckabee locked in a statistical dead heat, each drawing around 10 percent of likely voters. And a January Magellan Strategies survey put Palin’s unfavorability rating at over 30 percent among a group of GOP voters — 91 percent of whom described themselves as “extremely likely” to vote in the primary.

The standard path for a socially-conservative candidate like Palin would be a big win in Iowa, survival in New Hampshire, and a rout in the congenial terrain of South Carolina, where Palin’s endorsement last year of Nikki Haley helped make her governor.

Even there, though, Palin can’t seem to crack the top tier. She trails Huckabee and even Romney – whose campaign effectively died there in 2008 — in a January PPP poll, drawing 18 percent to Huckabee’s 26 percent. Even in that solidly conservative Republican electorate, 28 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the former Alaska governor, according to the survey.

The formula for presidential primaries is to surge into the late days of the Iowa caucuses, and never look back—which suggests Palin’s weak head-to-head numbers and dangerous unfavorable ratings in the early states could be a perception she could change with campaigning. But they also mean that she’s less the field’s 800-pound gorilla than an intriguing sidelight, a character who – for some Republicans – recalled last cycle’s media-star dud, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

Another obstacle to Palin in Iowa: The increasingly serious approach of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann to the state. Bachmann, who has visited twice and been embraced by social conservative leaders, “takes up all the space that Palin might have here” said a prominent Republican who backs another candidate.

Ed Failor, Jr., the president of the influential group Iowans for Tax Reform, said he hears the same refrain from other activists and members of his church.

“What I hear people say is that her quitting her governorship in the middle matters to them,” he said. “Doing a TV show with her family is fine and very cool she has every right to do it. But we’re taking her less seriously.”

Byron Tau contributed to this report.

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