Palin Speech Most Important For GOP

Palin Picks Scab From McCain Age Issue.

Tonight Governor Sarah Palin, McCain’s VP pick will have a steep hill to climb to overcome a weekend of very personal nastiness by leftist bloggers and biased media attacks. Negatives have been focused on her (in)experience, McCain age, and whether she is ready to be president.

The Palin pick has forced Barack Obama’s campaign into, as the New York Times put it, “recalibrating their strategies for the presidential campaign - and reconsidering some of their basic assumptions about which states and voters are in play. …”

Voters by a substantial majority think a woman is likely to be elected president of the United States in the next 10 years. Nearly half (48%) think Hillary Clinton is at least somewhat likely to be the one.

While 85% of voters say they are willing to vote for a woman for president nine percent (9%) disagree and seven percent (7%) are undecided. Ironically, men are more willing to vote for a woman president than women voters by an 89% to 81% margin.

If men have their way they prefer Sarah Palin over Clinton 49% to 45% according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Women prefer Clinton over Palin 57% to 35% if they were the presidential candidate some think that is because Palin is just too attractive.

Overall 52% has a favorable opinion of Palin and those opinions are sharply split along partisan and racial lines- only 15% of Democrat and blacks say they could vote for Palin.

This survey seems to points away from Palin helping McCain close the 10-12% Obama holds over him among women.

After weeks of running neck-and-neck with McCain in the Rasmussen daily Presidential Tracking Poll, Obama has begun to pull away in recent days. It will take another week or so to determine if the Republican convention can overcome the bounce Obama received from Obama’s convention in Denver. Wednesday morning Obama gets 50% to McCain’s 45% according to Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll.