RasmussenReports.com, November 28th, 2006
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (D) has his sights set on the White House, but few Americans have their eyes on Tom Vilsack. A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 Likely Voters found that 61% of Americans don’t know enough about him to form an opinion.
Overall, 19% have a favorable opinion of him while 20% have an unfavorable view. Even these numbers are soft—just 2% say they have a “very” favorable opinion of Vilsack while 5% have a “very” unfavorable opinion. Compare these results with other Democratic Presidential hopefuls as well as Republican contenders and other Political Leaders.
Predictably, given his low name recognition, Vilsack trails John McCain badly in a General Election Match-up. Our latest polling on this race shows McCain with 49% of the vote while 32% opt for Vilsack. However, when Vilsack is matched against another little known Republican, Mitt Romney, the race is very competitive—39% for Vilsack and 35% for Romney. In that match-up, 16% say they’d vote for some other candidate.
Generally speaking, McCain and Giuliani rank ahead of other candidates in early General Election polling. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Al Gore are the most competitive Democrats.
Vilsack is not a factor in polling on favorites for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
The national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports November 10-11, 2006. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
