Public Policy Polling released a poll yesterday showing that among possible 2012 GOP presidential contenders, Mike Huckabee is currently faring the best in a possible match-up against President Obama:
Our fifth monthly national survey matching up Barack Obama against some possible 2012 opponents comes to the same two primary conclusions as the other four:
1) Obama leads all comers
2) Mike Huckabee, at least at this early stage, is the strongest GOP candidate
In this particular iteration of the poll, Huckabee comes the closest to Obama that he has yet, trailing just 47-44. That's tightened since the President led 48-42 a month ago.
Huckabee also has the best overall favorability rating of the Republican quartet we tested, at 45/28.
Obviously, polls conducted three years before the next election don't mean very much, but the results are still interesting nonetheless, especially in light of another poll PPP recently released on just who the "Birthers" are and what they seem to believe. Today, PPP broke out the numbers a bit and found out that, among the Birthers, Sarah Palin is their favorite candidate, followed by Huckabee:
The birthers love them some Sarah Palin. She's the most popular politician in the mix with them at 66% favorability. Next is Mike Huckabee at 58%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 46%, and Mitt Romney at 43%.
In a follow-up post, PPP's Tom Jensen says that non-Birther Republicans tend to like Huckabee most:
60% of those folks (the reasonable wing of the party?) have a favorable opinion of Mike Huckabee, 58% have one of Sarah Palin, 57% have one of Mitt Romney, and 52% have one of Newt Gingrich.
Since Huckabee appears to have a 58% favorability rating among Birthers and a 60% favorability rating among non-birthers, it'll be interesting to see what happens to his ratings after he appears at the How To Take Back America Conference next month, which is being hosted by three bona fide birthers, foremost among them conference co-host Janet Porter who has recently been obsessed with spreading claims about how government internment camps and mass evacuation buses are part of a nefarious plot by the government to kill millions of Americans under the guise of providing flu vaccines.
You know, somebody really ought to ask Huckabee whether or not he agrees with the insanity being spread by the hosts of this event at which he is scheduled to be a keynote speaker, seeing as there have been a couple of polls recently sugesting that he just might be the GOP front-runner in 2012.
