*Even after voting 96% of the time with George W. Bush, even after all the gaffes and revelations during the 2006 campaign – “macaca” being only one of them, given that since 2006 he’s worked as a corporate stooge for fossil fuel industry, and given that his policy prescriptions would be disastrous for the middle class and divisive for everyone else, how on earth can George Allen have a 46%-31% (+15 points) favorable rating in the latest Washington Post poll?
*That’s crazy enough, but even crazier: how the heck can Tim Kaine have a lower approval rating than THAT guy?!? (Kaine’s at 41%-39% in the Washington Post poll)
*Last but not least, how can Kaine be tied with Allen in poll after poll, at the same time that Barack Obama appears to be winning Virginia by 7-8 points over Willard “Mitt” Romney?
I’m also having a lot of trouble understanding this:
Although his popularity is down across the board, Kaine actually suffered the steepest fall with people planning to support Obama in November. His favorability rating dropped 20 percentage points among that group, even though Kaine has not broken with Obama on any high-profile issues recently. The percentage of non-white respondents viewing Kaine unfavorably climbed 17 points, and his decline in popularity has been pronounced among lower-income voters and those without college degrees.
But the overall portion of registered voters saying they planned to cast their ballot for Kaine hasn’t moved a bit, including among Obama supporters, indicating that backers of the president aren’t planning to abandon the Senate hopeful in November.
Huh? None of that makes any sense to me at all; why would people who support President Obama – a close ally of Tim Kaine’s – be feeling less favorably towards Kaine now than they were a year ago? Same question about non-white respondents? I can’t make sense of that, especially combined with the poll finding that these same people are still planning to vote for Kaine anyway.
All of this is strange, even bizarre, if you ask me. How can it be the case (assuming this poll is accurate, which I’m starting to think it might not be)? According to the Washington Post article accompanying the poll numbers, part of it could be the negative TV ads that have been run against Tim Kaine by outside “SuperPACs” (e.g., Karl Rove’s). Also, the Post points to “efforts by Republicans to tie [Kaine] to health-care reform, the stimulus package and other controversial Obama administration policies.” But that doesn’t explain why Obama’s winning Virginia in the same Post poll.
The bottom line from my perspective? These results are weird, seem to be internally inconsistent, and intuitively “feel” wrong. Yet here they are. Any explanations? Is the Kaine campaign going to have to go super-negative on George Allen to remind people of his sordid past? Or what?>
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
