Amid the spate of prattle from Palinites and Huckanuts and whatever passes for a Gingrich supporter, I thought I would excise a moment to look at the ubiquitous PPP polling over the last month and see what other facts can be gleaned. Todays perspective from this Democratic polling organization went on and on about Romney’s problems with Conservative Republicans in the last 9 states they surveyed, including 5 in the Midwest ( Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and ohio ) , 2 in the South ( North Carolina and Virginia ) and 1 each in the West ( Montana ) and the Northeast ( Massachusetts ). And, according to PPP’s headlines, Mitt has a serious problems with a GOP base that is over 73 % conservative in these 9 states. Notwithstanding the fact that I think these numbers are dramatically skewed, in the Midwest especially, let’s look at some other polling data from the very same polls.

The average GOP percentage in these 9 states, according to the PPP polling, is 34 %.  Of these 34 %, 70 + % are indicated by PPP as Conservative . Of the remaining 66 %,  38 % were Democrats and 28 % were Independents (who can frequently vote in GOP primaries in many of these states.) Let’s take a look at how the candidates and Romney fare among the majority of the voters in the often abused ” Favorability ” category.

INDEPENDENTS

Huckabee………   + 3 %   Favorable

Romney…………   + 1 %   Favorable

Palin……………..   – 26 %  Unfavorable

Gingrich………..   – 27 %  Unfavorable

• Romney leads in Virginia, Massachusetts, Michigan, and is tied in Minnesota

• Huckabee leads in Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Montana North Carolina and is tied in Minnesota

• Gingrich and Palin lead nowhere

DEMOCRATS

To examine the potential Democratic vote, I used the simple inverse expedient of looking at the ” Not Negative ” or Undecided vote. Accordingly

Huckabee……….+ 56 %     Undecided or ” Not Negative ”

Romney ……….. + 51 %

Gingrich……….. + 33 %

Palin……………. + 22 %

The upshot of this ” assessment” is that Huckabee and Romney are statistically tied in these 9 states in terms of favorability assessments from the    66 % of general election voters who are Independents or Democrats and Palin and Gingrich are overwhelmingly negative.

It’s very early and PPP is one Democratic polling outfit, but interesting anyway