Poll: Obama Would Beat Palin in 2012

BY Aliyah Shahid
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The midterm elections are so yesterday. The eyes of many political insiders are already turning to 2012.

President Obama would handily beat Sarah Palin in the next presidential election, despite strong anti-incumbent feelings and the Democrats losing the House to the GOP this week, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll indicates.

And while Obama would win against the Tea Party favorite, 52% to 44% among registered voters, pit the President against Mike Huckabee and it's an entirely different story.

[Read more about the 2012 presidential election.]

The former Arkansas Governor and 2008 GOP White House candidate would beat Obama 52% to 44% in a hypothetical matchup, the survey reveals.

While there's no clear GOP frontrunner, 21% Republicans said they're most likely to back Huckabee, 20% said they'd support former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 14% said they'd back Palin and 12% were for ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Romney would also beat Obama 50 % to 45%, but Obama would beat Gingrich 49% to 47%. The poll's sampling error was plus or minus 3%.

[Check out a roundup of political cartoons on Obama.]

Huckabee and Romney have not publicly committed to seeking the post, but Palin has said that she'd run for president if "nobody else wanted to step up." Similarly, Gingrich has been flirting with the idea of a run, recently telling the Washington Post that his decision will be based on "whether or not it is practical, which I increasingly think it is."

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Indiana, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania all accrued single-digit support.

"Looking ahead to 2012, it may be too early to count Barack Obama out, particularly if Sarah Palin is his opponent," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

"The former Alaska governor gets a lot of attention, but she is in third place when Republicans are asked to pick a presidential nominee, and in a hypothetical matchup with Obama she is arguably the weakest candidate of the top-tier GOP hopefuls."

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