Counter-Intuitive Thought of the Day: Palin May Help With Male Voters

I spend a good portion of my day reading my RSS feed. One of the things I try to do is connect dots others may not have seen. For instance, Matt Yglesias today:

There really are self-identified Democrats who seem resistant to Barack Obama. But there’s very little evidence that their resistance is driven by their ovaries. It’s actually a disproportionately male group. Instead, Obama-skeptical Democrats are older, hawkish, and perhaps not buying Obama as an economic populist. Is going with a young, transparently underqualifed woman with orthodox economic views really such a great way to reach these people? In fact, it’s a terrible way. And the other three Palin virtues, from a news cycle POV, all depend on the fact that it would be crazy to pick Sarah Palin.

And Nate Silver finds Rasmussen data that men like Palin better than women:

What’s interesting, however, is that while there is a gender gap in these numbers, it’s not the one many observers were anticipating. Rather, along a variety of metrics, men like the Palin choice better than women:

These numbers pretty much speak for themselves, but men have a favorable imperssion of Palin by a 35-point margin, whereas women have a favorable impression of her by an 18-point margin. Conversely, by a 23-point margin, women do not think Palin is ready to be President, whereas Palin lost this question among men by a considerably smaller 6-point magrin.

I still think her resume is dangerously thin to be a VP; and that apparently her best debate characteristic is that Biden may go too far in debating her is worrisome. (notice Hillary did not have that problem in 1999 against Lazio, or this cycle against any of the men; she could hold her own.)

But that said, it’s possible this pick may appeal to a key swing demographic … just not the one the media is talking about.