Poll: Most Don't Want Sarah Palin to Run for President
Specifically, 71 percent say they do not want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president, while 21 percent say they do want her to run.
When the results are split out by party, 56 percent of Republicans say they do not want her to seek the office and 30 percent do. Meanwhile, 88 percent of Democrats do not want her to run. Among independents, 65 percent do not want her to run and 25 percent do.
The poll also finds that more people view Palin negatively than positively and that her book tour did not improve overall views of her. However, she is a little better-known now than she was last fall, and both favorable and unfavorable ratings of her have increased slightly.
Forty-three percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of her. Independents are divided, with 30 percent holding favorable views and 35 percent unfavorable.
Conservatives are the only ideological group that holds net positive views of her -- just under half do, while a quarter are unfavorable and a quarter of conservatives are undecided.
But while favorable toward her, most conservatives say they do not want to see Palin run in 2012 – 58 percent of conservatives say she should not run.
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Palin is expected to make her next big public appearance at a Tea Party convention early next month in Nashville. The CBS News poll also asked Americans about their views of the new movement, but found it appears to be still be too nascent a movement to have registered yet with most Americans.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans are either undecided about the movement or haven't heard enough so far to have an opinion about it. Among those who have heard of it, 18 percent have a favorable opinion of it and 12 percent have an unfavorable opinion.
Among those who have heard of the movement (many of whom are conservatives), 46 percent say it reflects the views of all Americans while 40 percent say it does not.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1,090 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone January 14-17, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.
This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.