After reading this story on HuffPo about Bachmann's collapsing campaign, I started to wonder where she would go after it all fell apart.
It's possible that she could make it to NH, but very unlikely. She's not attracting the SuperPACs, and her small-donor base must be getting tapped out. The Tea Party has been waffling about their support for her, and evangelicals seem to be looking "someone else". That's pretty weak, when she is the head of the House Tea Party Caucus and has always been the one willing to say exactly what the most irrational Tea Party adherents want to hear. And her image has always been about as evangelical as anyone can get. I mean, Jesus told her to run for office, after all. Of course, she is also (ostensibly) "from" Iowa, and it's not as if there in no "cross-pollination" in politics between Iowa and Minnesota.
The thing is, Bachmann isn't very popular in Minnesota, either.
Here are three polls from Public Policy Polling on Minnesota voters:
These polls cover far more than the shorthand titles I have given them indicate.
On the first link, Q12 is a match-up between Obama and Bachmann for President.
Q12 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 56%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 35%
Undecided....................................................... 9%
Okay, she'd lose by twenty points in her home state. But Minnesotans still like her, right?
Q5 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of Michele Bachmann?
Favorable .............. 33%
Unfavorable........... 59%
Not sure ................ 8%
I guess they don't like her.
Note that the percentage that would vote for her is almost the exactly the percentage who consider her favorably. In this case, people would be voting for her, rather than against Obama. If she is the "anti-Obama" then why does she not draw a huge number of voters who may be willing to overlook their opinion of her to defeat the "reviled" Obama?
Of course, he may not be:
Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of Barack
Obama’s job performance?
Approve .......................................................... 51%
Disapprove...................................................... 44%
Not sure .......................................................... 5%
If Bachmann gets 35% of the vote, but 44% disapprove of Obama.... Then there's 9% of Minnesotans that dislike Obama, but who would still prefer him to Bachmann. Even winning them over wouldn't keep her from losing.
Let's look at the second link, where we see a match-up with the incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Michele Bachmann:
Q7 If the candidates for US Senate next year were
Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Amy Klobuchar ............................................... 57%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 37%
Undecided....................................................... 5%
Okay, so Bachmann would lose by 20 points in statewide office. So it's not just that Minnesotans don't consider her "Presidential material", it's also that they don't want her representing the State at all. As a Representative, Bachmann doesn't represent the entire State; only her district.
And that district is a gerrymandered R+7 . That Cook PVI rating of R+7, means that the district tends to vote 7 points more Republican than they do Democratic. Yet it took Bachmann three tries to get a majority (rather than a plurality), and even then did not hit the expected 57%. That is not a strong showing.
But that's not all. The crosstabs are revealing. Bachmann only wins 77% of those that voted for McCain in 2008. And only 66% of those Minnesota McCain voters have a favorable opinion of Bachmann.
That's the base of the Republican Party, and Bachmann isn't scoring that big with them in her home State.
On top of that, the gender gap is appalling in her "favorables". 62% of women have an unfavorable opinion her, compared to 28% favorable. Well over two-to-one. Only 32% of women would vote for Bachmann over Klobuchar, down around her base support of 37%.
The third poll shows that Minnesota is 31% Republican, and "very conservative" voters are only 15% of the registered voters. That's a small base of "very conservative" potential votes, and only half of her own Party. She wins election because these "very conservative" voters are concentrated, not because she has statewide support.
We don't know yet how the redistricting will go in Minnesota. Some say she could lose her district. Others see her as merely weakened. Remember, she only got 46.41% against Tinklenberg. 52.5% against Clark doesn't leave a lot of breathing room. Aside from that, if her campaign collapses, There can be no more pretense that she is wildly popular for "speaking the truth", nor of any hidden Tea Party cavalry that will sweep in and win the day, nor any vast evangelical army that will hold out for the purest candidate and support her to the bitter end.
Basically, the rest of the Republicans in the country don't particularly care for her, and her hard-core supporters seem willing to "settle" rather than go down with her. She's seen as a joke, within her own Party, not just in "elite media circles" and decadent urban liberals as she would like everyone to think. Although it would be nice to see her lose in NH and SC, just so her supporters can't try to resurrect a myth of her hidden staunch support in other areas of the country.
Even if by some political miracle she stayed in past Super Tuesday, that would be ultimately worse. She would have lost then. Losing is the ultimate sin for Republicans, but more so for Minnesota Republicans. The last time the MNGOP gave a loser a second chance was Boschwitz against Wellstone part II. They won't make that mistake again.
The basis of Bachmann's "popularity" in her district, in cultural terms, is like a thumb in the eye to the metro area. Bachmann was supposed to "blow the minds" of all the urban liberals with "the truth", and leave the Twin Cities sheepishly admitting that they had been wrong all along by voting Democratic - even worse, for a Muslim. A lot Bachmann's support comes from "white flight" urban refugees, and anyone who dumps all over the "urban hellhole" they fled from and the mindset that maintains it, is all right in their book.
The collapse of Bachmann's campaign creates doubt in the minds of her district supporters, who are far more accustomed to certainty in thought. She's suddenly not the gorgeous girl that everyone wants to dance with. Instead, she's ended up serving punch and watching the coats. Could it be that those decadent urban libs are laughing at us, instead of being terrified by our awesome heroine Michele? Did we really vote for, and donate so much of our money to, a punchline? Uh-oh.
So what is her other option? To drop out and endorse someone else, throwing her fickle evangelical "supporters" and hesitant Tea Party "masses" over to a winner.
The question, then, is where does she throw that (largely insubstantial and possibly fictional) support? Romney's probably out of the question, but it could help to prop up his "evangelical cred" to have Bachmann's endorsement. It would symbolically sever her from the Tea Party, however. If it didn't, it would de-fang the Tea Party by showing them to be just another Republican constituency that "goes along to get along" and falls in line on command from the "Party elite".
If not Romney, how about Perry? The two constituencies overlap somewhat, but Perry isn't doing considerably better than Bachmann on the national scale. She might be a useful tool for the Perry campaign in the early States, but not so much in the Super Tuesday sweep. And Bachmann's proclivity for saying "interesting" things wouldn't lend gravitas to a candidate that already looks like a lightweight.
Santorum is sinking as badly as Bachmann, and Gingrich doesn't seem like Bachmann's cup of tea. So maybe Ron Paul. She could bolster Paul's evangelical cred and push that Tea Party line forward. On a symbolic level, it could counter the co-option of the Tea Party narrative.
Nationally, Bachmann is doing only marginally better than Paul in the latest polling.
Paul loses 46/41 with 13 undecided when matched up with Obama. Bachmann loses 50/41 with 10 undecided. It's not just about Iowa, after all. Perry also breaks 50/40 with 10 undecided. Seeing a pattern there?
However:
Q11 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt
Romney, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 45%
Mitt Romney.................................................... 47%
Undecided....................................................... 8%
So Romney can peel off an extra 6 or 7% that the other candidates can't. And that margin of victory is within the margin of error (3.7%) for the poll. That's not a compelling case for "electability" over Bachmann, Paul, or Perry but it's better than nothing.
What those match-ups show is that Bachmann, Paul, and Perry all are drawing from pretty much the same well as far as the general Electorate goes. Among strictly Republican primary voters, Bachmann draws 39% of Perry supporters as a second choice, and only 12% of Paul supporters. Among those that self-identify as Tea Party supporters, Bachmann has 58% favorables, compared to only 29% for Paul and 53% for Perry. And 59% of those Tea Party supporters say they "might end up supporting someone else".
While nationally (primary voters only), Bachmann gets 53% "favorable" from the "very conservative" bloc, Paul only gets only 27%. Both are about evenly matched for the "somewhat conservative" bloc. So it looks as if Bachmann might give Paul a boost from the most conservative segment of the Party, as well as the Tea Party, with minimal redundant support. PPP doesn't break down the evangelical vote in these polls, unfortunately. Bachmann also has a comparably attractive 42/36 favorable breakdown among female primary voters, when looking at Paul's dismal 28/53 numbers. So Paul could maybe get some more female supporters if Bachmann latched on to his campaign.
Unfortunately, Bachmann is the "kiss of death" to Paul's much touted "youth vote" in the primaries. Bachmann is despised, 24/57 unfavorable in the 18-29 age group. Paul pretty much breaks even at 43/38 with that age group on his own. With seniors, it's almost the reverse.
Senior primary voters (65+) hate Paul (25/58), while Bachmann breaks even (41/41). Senior primary voters essentially split between Gingrich and Romney, so Bachmann would be a solid contribution there with her 5%. Bachmann's weak 10% support with the youth vote is not much of a prize for any campaign.
Still, Paul's support is cult-like in its devotion to him. A Bachmann endorsement would hardly scare off support, and would probably bring in Tea Party and "very conservative" voters. Both of these demographics are relatively immune to fallout from Bachmann's "interesting" remarks.
Dare we even dream that Paul goes with Bachmann as his running mate? Paul's campaign has a strong chance of "going the distance", while not necessarily winning the nomination. The same Party apparatus that froze him out of the process in 2008 is still in power, but he has the bare minimum of money and support to make it to Convention....though he will die there.
This would raise the stakes considerably for Bachmann. If she becomes the next Palin and goes down to rejection by her Party, that's a lot worse than dropping out early and being credited with a pat on the head for being a "team player".
She certainly couldn't bring much support in Minnesota in terms of crossover votes in the primary, and her shine with Minnesota Republicans is faded. Only 26% of MN Republicans think she should run for President in the first place, and a relatively few (43%, considering it's her own Party) think she should run for the Senate. Even worse, only 10% of her home State's Republicans think she should run for the House. And 46% of the State's Independent voters think she should run for no office at all. Likewise, 48% of the white Minnesota voters say she should not run for any office. Among all age groups, she ranges from 44-49% saying the same thing.
51% of Minnesota women voters say Michele should not seek any office (including her House seat). Only 10% of the State's "very conservative" voters think she should run for the House. Instead, 44% of the "very conservative" bloc think she should run for the Senate - though she'd lose to Klobuchar by twenty points, as indicated earlier. Delusional? You bet.
2012 could spell the end of Bachmann as an elected official.
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