Sarah Palin (R. AK) is like heroin to Alaska GOP voters. They just can't quit her:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
Alaska should be a top tier pick up opportunity for Senate Republicans next year...but their top choice of a candidate is Sarah Palin. 36% of GOP primary voters in the state say they'd like Palin to be their standard bearer against Mark Begich to 26% for Mead Treadwell, 15% for Dan Sullivan, and 12% for Joe Miller. Palin leads mostly based on her strength with 'very conservative' voters where she gets 43% to 20% for Treadwell, but she also leads him 28/25 with moderates.
The problem for Republicans with a Palin candidacy is that even though she is in good standing with the party base, voters overall don't like her at all. She has a 39/58 favorability rating, including 33/64 with key independent voters. There's a lot of division about how strong her ties to the state even are anymore- only 47% of voters consider her to still be an Alaskan while 46% don't, and 37% of voters in the state think it would be more appropriate for her to run for the Senate from Arizona to 41% who say Alaska.
It all adds up to a 52/40 lead for Begich in a hypothetical match up with Palin. He leads by 21 points with independents, 56/35, and takes 20% of the Republican vote. It's a slight improvement for Palin from February when we found her trailing Begich 54/38, but she's very much in a hole. - PPP, 7/30/13
PPP surveyed 890 Alaska voters, including an oversample of 507 usual Republican primary voters, between July 25th and 28th. The margin of error for the overall survey is +
- 3.3% and +- 4.4% for the GOP portion. I for one would actually love to see Palin go up against Begich so Begich can keep making awesome Tweets like this:
More below the fold.
So Begich must be at least smiling about that this section of PPP's poll. The rest is mixed news. PPP shows Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell (R. AK) is the strongest candidate to go up against Begich but Treadwell trails Begich 44/40. An improvement from PPP's February poll that had Begich leading Treadwell 47/39. But the NRSC better pray that Tea Party Wild Card Joe Miller sits out the race because in a three way primary, it breaks down to Treadwell having 33% to Sullivan/s 25% and Miller's 24%. No word yet from Sullivan is he will run though.
As for Begich, his approval ratings are 42/41. Not ideal but he still beats Sullivan 46/39 and Miller 55/32. Part of the problem might be because of President Obama's standing approval ratings in Alaska are 39/57. Begich will have to both distance himself from Obama to some degree but still make the point that he has been the only Senator from Alaska to have a close relationship with a sitting President that gives Begich to prove how he's delivered for Alaska. But if there's one issue Begich could distance himself from Obama, it's Social Security. Begich strongly opposes the chained CPI and authored the Preserving and Protecting Social Security Act that makes the wealthy pay more into Social Security. In fact, you can check out Begich and Senator Tom Harkin (D. IA) discuss expanding Social Security with Ed Schultz here:
You can sign PCCC's petition calling for expanding Social Security here:
http://act.boldprogressives.org/...
Here's the other polling results from Alaska:
It definitely looks like the action in Alaska next year will be the Senate race. Governor Sean Parnell actually has approval numbers that could suggest some vulnerability- 44% give him good marks to 42% who disapprove. But he still has wide leads in hypothetical match ups with a quartet of potential Democratic opponents- he's up 13 on Ethan Berkowitz at 51/38, 19 on Bill Wielechowski at 52/33, 20 on Les Gara at 53/33, and 21 on Hollis French at 54/33. Parnell also looks pretty solid against a primary challenge from Bill Walker, leading him 60/22.
The Alaska House race is a similar story- Don Young isn't terribly popular with a 47/43 approval rating but he still leads potential Democratic challenger Matt Moore by 28 points at 56/28. - PPP, 7/30/13
Begich is going to be the top incumbent who is going to need our support for next year. We'll need him to keep fighting to expand Social Security, protect our civil liberties, push for GMO labels and keep holding Wall Street accountable. If you'd like to get involved with Begich's campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.markbegich.com/