Poll: The First Lady Free-For-All, Michelle vs. Cindy

[DeepModem Mom]

WP political blog, "The Fix," by Chris Cillizza
The First Lady Free-For-All: Michelle vs. Cindy

....New polling conducted in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin for the washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal by Quinnipiac University provides some interesting data on how well known each spouse is and what voters think of them.

As expected, Michelle Obama is the better known of the two -- a name identification edge born in equal parts of her prominent role in her husband's campaign and Republicans' efforts to vilify her. (It's also worth noting that the poll was in the field for almost the entire arc of the now infamous New Yorker cover controversy, an episode that likely had a dramatic effect on Michelle Obama's name ID.) A sidenote: If you haven't read Sophia A. Nelson's op-ed piece entitled "Black. Female. Accomplished. Attacked." about Michelle Obama, you need to.

(NOTE: Link to WP, "Black. Female. Accomplished. Attacked":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802557.html)

In each of the four states, roughly half of respondents knew enough about Michelle Obama to offer an opinion about her. Opinion was most divided in Colorado (30 percent favorable to Michelle/26 percent unfavorable) while in each of the other three states roughly three in ten voters said they had a favorable impression of her while less than one in five said they felt unfavorably toward her.

Cindy McCain, a much less high-profile presence on the campaign trail, was both less well known and more widely liked than Michelle Obama. Nearly six in ten voters in all four states said they hadn't heard enough about Cindy to offer an opinion; among those who did have an opinion about her, however, those rating her favorably outstripped those who regarded her unfavorably by roughly a three-to-one margin.

When voters were asked which of the two women "better fits your idea of what a First Lady should be," the results in three of the states -- Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin -- were a virtual draw. In Colorado, however, 37 percent said Cindy McCain was more in keeping with what a First Lady should be while 27 percent said Michelle Obama fit that description.

What do all these data points tell us? That Michelle Obama has more potential -- for both good and bad -- to be a major factor in her husband's chances this fall than does Cindy McCain....

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/07/the_first_lady_freefor_all_mic.html?hpid=topnews