Poll: Six in 10 Rule Out Palin in 2012

Dec. 17, 2010 -- Caribou may worry when they see Sarah Palin coming. Barack Obama, not so much.

The reason: 59 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll flatly rule out voting for Palin for president -- substantially more than say there's no way they'd vote for Obama, or, for that matter, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. And Obama leads Palin by a wide margin in current vote preferences, factoring Bloomberg in or out.

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It's too early in the 2012 presidential election cycle to make too much of the horse-race results in this poll, produced by Langer Research Associates for ABC News. But the numbers of Americans who say they wouldn't even consider voting for Palin -- and the even larger number who see her as unqualified for the presidency (67 percent in an ABC/Post poll in October) -- indicate serious obstacles in her path, even if not of the antlered variety.

The trends, moreover, are not in Palin's favor. Just over a year ago 53 percent said they wouldn't consider her for president. That's risen, as noted, to 59 percent now, and includes significant chunks of the GOP base, such as 27 percent of John McCain voters, nearly three in 10 Republicans, four in 10 conservatives and four in 10 evangelical white Protestants. About equal numbers of men (58 percent) and women (60 percent) rule Palin out.

Just eight percent of Americans say they'd "definitely" vote for Palin were she to run for president; an additional 31 percent say they'd consider it. But that adds up to just 39 percent who'd even give her a look (41 percent if you count the undecideds) -- well short of what it customarily takes to win the White House, absent an unusually strong third-party candidate.

OBAMA -- In contrast to Palin, 26 percent say they'd definitely vote for Obama for a second term, and an additional 30 percent would consider him -- an available pool of 56 percent (58 percent, with the undecideds thrown in). Despite recent criticisms from his party and its liberal branch, 54 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of liberals -- and 65 percent of liberal Democrats -- say they'd definitely vote to re-elect Obama, along with nonwhites, his most committed groups by far.