Rasmussen Poll: Obama Does Best Against Palin

Will she or won’t she? Sarah Palin has a busy schedule leading up to a major public event in Iowa on Sept. 3, and Republican insider Karl Rove predicts she’s about to enter the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

If Election Day took place right now, President Obama would defeat the former Alaska governor 50 percent to 33 percent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. This marks the first time that the president has risen out of the 40s in hypothetical matchups with any of the major GOP presidential hopefuls. Fifteen percent prefer some other candidate, and 2 percent are undecided.

Rasmussen took the match-up surveys of 1,000 Likely Voters Aug. 11 and 12.

Last month, Obama posted a 47 percent to 38 percent lead over Palin, the GOP’s unsuccessful vice presidential candidate in 2008.

Palin earns support from 62 percent of Republicans, while 88 percent of Democrats back the president. Voters not affiliated with either party prefer Obama by a 51-30 percent margin.

Obama holds a narrow 44 percent to 38 percent lead over Palin among male voters, but women prefer the incumbent by a sizable 56 percent to 29 percent margin.

Just over 90 percent of the Political Class favors Obama given this matchup, while Mainstream voters are evenly divided.

A generic Republican candidate held a six-point advantage over Obama — 48 percent to 42 percent — in a hypothetical 2012 election matchup for the week ending Aug. 14. It was the sixth week in a row and the 12th week out of 15 since the beginning of May in which the generic Republican has led Obama. Rasmussen Reports will release new figures for this matchup tomorrow at 3 pm Eastern.

Last month, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the leader in the race for the GOP nomination at the time, was essentially tied with the president in a 2012 matchup. Obama held a 44 percent to 39 percent lead over Texas Governor Rick Perry and led Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann 46 percent to 39 percent.

But following his official entry into the race just over a week ago, Perry has jumped out to a double-digit lead over Romney and Bachmann among likely GOP Primary voters with the other announced candidates trailing even further behind.

In mid-June, a plurality of Republican primary voters felt it would be good for Perry to jump into the party’s presidential race and bad for the party if Palin joined the field.

But 52 percent of all voters nationwide said in a survey a year ago that their personal views are closer to Palin’s than they are to Obama’s. Forty percent said their views are closer to the president’s.