Republican efforts to paint President Obama as a liberal bogeyman have long been operational — he’s been the biggest spender in a storied history of Democratic big spenders, he’s instituting death panels, and of course, he wasn’t even born in America.
So Fox News thought they’d really drive the point home by asking the following question about all the major Presidential candidates in their new poll: What would your reaction be if [insert candidate here] were to become the next president? Possible answers: enthusiastic, pleased, neutral, displeased, and scared.
Well, surprise, surprise, some people are a little frightened. Twenty-nine percent of those polled by Fox said they would be “scared” if Obama were re-elected, 21 said the same about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 18 for businessman Herman Cain and 14 for former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney.
But not everyone is so afraid. A combined 37 percent said they would be “enthusiastic” and “pleased” if the president were to get a second term, while Romney only saw 21 percent in that group, Cain 23 and Perry 17.
There were a few odd questions in the Fox poll. One asked “Now that Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi has been killed, how confident are you that the people who removed him will cooperate and work with the United States?” Another asked “Considering both the full slate of Republican contenders and Democrat Barack Obama, do you think you or one of your close friends are more qualified to be president than anyone running right now, or not?” to which one fifth of the respondents literally said that a friend of theirs is more qualified than any of the current candidates.
The Fox News poll used 904 live telephone interviews with registered voters conducted from October 23rd to the 25th. It has a sampling error of three percent.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Poll Editor at TPM. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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