Are Alaskans Turning On Sarah Palin?
One poll seems to indicate just that:
Slightly more Alaskans – 48 percent – said they had negative feelings about Palin compared to 47 percent who had positive feelings and another five percent who had no opinion or didn’t know.
The poll taken at the end of Palin’s first week out of office represents a significant slide for the former governor who received higher positive ratings in a Hays Research Group poll in early May. At that time, 54 percent of Alaskans viewed her positively compared to 42 who had the opposite view.
The problem? This same pollster ran a final, pre-election poll for the state of Alaska that missed the mark on McCain/Palin vs. Obama/Biden by a whopping 20 points.
So maybe it’s best not to buy into the idea that Alaskans are writing of Palin. As a native Alaskan myself, with strong familial ties to the region, I can say that if anything Palin’s support in Alaska has been tempered by national criticism, not dissuaded.
And it might have a lot to do with the way Palin is constantly written off on the national stage as some backwoods bumpkin who ought to know better than to go strutting around among her betters as if she were equal or something. Alaskans are kind of proud of being backwoods bumpkins, by and large, and most of them have voted for Palin at least a couple of times now.
