Americans Not Impressed With Ryan Pick

Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie) pulled off a minor surprise by picking Paul Ryan to be his running mate in the November election. Now the political pundits and the media (and political junkies like myself) are all eager to see if this will help his campaign (i.e., give him a "bump" in the polls). Well, the initial indication is that Ryan may nor help as much as Romney had hoped.

The Gallup organization is one of the first to do some polling on Ryan being picked. This recent Gallup Poll, taken of a random national sample of 1,006 adults on August 12th (with a 4 point margin of error), shows that the Ryan choice is though to be excellent/good by a lower percentage of Americans than past vice-presidential choices in recent history. Even the initial reaction to Sarah Palin was better (with 46% saying it was excellent/good, while only 39% say the same about Ryan). Here is how it breaks down among political groups (with excellent/good being the first number, and fair/poor being the number in parentheses):

General Population...............39% (42%)
Republicans...............68% (18%)
Independents...............35% (43%)
Democrats...............18% (67%)

And things don't look much better when Ryan's favorability numbers are considered. Only one recent vice-presidential pick had a lower favorability number -- Sarah Palin (and that was because she had a much larger number of people who had never heard of her (71% to Ryan's 58%). And once that 58% learns about Ryan's plans for abolishing Medicare, giving the rich huge new tax breaks, and his opposition to women's rights, I really don't see his favorability improving a whole lot. Here is how he compares to recent veep choices in favorability:

Paul Ryan...............25%
Sarah Palin...............22%
Joe Biden...............34%
John Edwards...............54%
Joe Lieberman...............37%
Dick Cheney...............51%
Jack Kemp...............56%
Al Gore...............59%

And here how the favorable numbers for Ryan breaks down according to political group:

General public...............25%
Republicans...............50%
Independents...............23%
Democrats...............6%

I can't believe Romney will be very happy with those initial numbers. He has struck a chord with the teabaggers, but most of America is not very impressed.