Women Voters on Palin: “So What”

September 3, 2008 Uncategorized 4

The Associated Press is reporting that most women voters don’t think all that much of Sarah Palin.  The McCain camp is “angrily defending” her selection.

From the story:

Six in 10 women voters see McCain’s choice of a female running mate as a calculated political decision rather than one based on Palin’s experience and qualities, the poll conducted by the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group showed.

“Women voters see the choice of Governor Palin as being driven by politics rather than by any sense of conviction on Senator McCain’s part that she has the experience and qualities to make a good vice president,” the research group said in a statement.

52 percent of the 800 women surveyed were voting for the Obama/Biden ticket.

4 Comments

  1. from a PR newsletter I get:
    **McCain’s PR Mess: With Convention Upended By Gustov and VP Pick Embroiled In Myriad Controversy, Messaging Challenges Add Up**

    A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question how thoroughly McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket. On Monday morning, Palin issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father. Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Palin’s husband was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge, the NY Times reports.

    Aides to McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Palin, reports Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller.

    While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Palin to question McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

    At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Palin had been selected as McCain’s running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described. People familiar with the process said Palin had responded to a standard form with more than 70 questions. Although the Washington Post quoted advisers to McCain as saying Palin had been subjected to an FBI background check, an FBI official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

    In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Palin might be under consideration.

    “They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Palin served as mayor, told the Times.

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