The Palin Effect: Not The Results McCain Was Hoping For

A new poll out today from EMILY's List (before the wingnuts jump on the source, note that the survey was conducted by the highly respected Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group) shows that John McCain's last-minute, last-ditch selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate may not bring him the female support, specifically among Hillary Clinton voters, he thought it would.

The more that Hillary Clinton's primary supporters learn about Sarah Palin, the less likely they are to support John McCain.

* By the end of the survey, a 55% majority of Clinton's voters say that Palin's inclusion on the ticket makes them less likely to vote for John McCain (just 9% say her presence on the ticket makes them more likely to support McCain).
* Obama goes from a 44-percentage-point lead (69% to 25%) to a 54-percentage-point lead (75% to 21%) over McCain among these Clinton voters as they learn more about Sarah Palin's background and her positions on core issues.

Finally, as these survey findings confirm, the Democratic presidential ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden continues to benefit from strong support of women voters. By an 11-percentage-point margin (52% to 41%), women voters support the Obama-Biden ticket over the McCain-Palin ticket, which places this Democratic ticket well ahead of Kerry-Edward's performance among women voters in 2004 (+3 points Kerry-Edwards over Bush-Cheney).

You can read the rest of the poll results here.