[tacticalogic]

You think they asked the question differently for Palin than for the other candidates? Why do you think that? Have you seen the questions?

I think they asked the same questions. I'd question how representative their respondent pool is of conservative Republicans. People with a liberal bent are going to find more to like in Mitt or Huck than in Sarah. I suspect with some practice you can tune your respondent selection methodology to areas where you're more likely to find those people, and I wouldn't trust CNN not to do it.

[magritte]

The poll is not of "conservative Republicans"...just "Republicans." It has a pretty large sampling error (4.5 %), so there's a lot of swing room. The question asked is:

I'm going to read you the names of a few people who might run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. For each one, please tell me whether you would be very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not likely at all to support them if they decided to run for the Republican nomination in 2012.

The drift of the poll, however, is that Palin's support has lessened significantly amongst Republicans since 2008. Support (and non-support) for Romney, Gingrich and Huckabee is still within the margin of error since 2008, relatively unchanged.

Basically, all it says, right now Romney and Huckabee are a little more popular among Republicans than Palin and Gingrich. If this polling is the same at the end of 2011, it will be significant....until then...nah....magritte