Why Don’t Alaskans Like Sarah Palin?

This week, two items are offering a bit of down-home insight into Sarah Palin’s bizarre, often contradictory political career.

The first is a Sept. 1 survey from Public Policy Polling (PPP), which asked Alaska residents a series of questions about the former governor, including whether or not they would vote for her if she ran for president in 2012. The results are a bit surprising, and seem to elucidate an increasing disillusionment with the “Mama Grizzly.”

According to PPP, 62 percent of Alaskans said they don’t want Palin in the oval office. Only 17 percent said they would favor her as a candidate if given the additional options of Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Romney is the most popular choice in the Alaska poll, garnering 20 percent of the survey’s vote. Palin and Huckabee tied for second.

On the question of whether or not they hold a “favorable opinion” of Palin, a majority of Alaskans (51 percent) said they do. But, as PPP President Dean Debnam points out, “that is less than in other states.”

“Sarah Palin is this unique kind of character when you poll her,” Debnam told me. “Republicans give her a very high favorability rating—one of the highest out there. But when you poll and say ‘if she was running for president,’ and give [voters]…the other three top candidates, then she always polls in number three or number four.”

Palin’s sliding home-turf popularity might be baffling were it not for another piece out this week—this one from Vanity Fair—that provides excellent context for her home state’s hostility. The piece, titled “Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury,” depicts a mix of fear, awe and resentment among Wasilla residents. Some believe Palin has severe psychiatric problems; others think she’s a fraud; some even fled the state to avoid her. Most are too afraid of Palin to talk in detail with anyone from the press.

Palin, for her part, is more or less “disengaged from the community.” From the piece:

When in Wasilla, she rarely leaves the house. At her favorite coffee shop, Mocha Moose, Palin has been seen only once in the past three months. On those occasions when she goes to Church on the Rock, she usually arrives late, leaves early, and sits in the back. For runs to Target, she waits until it’s almost closing time. She has never darkened the doorway of Wasilla’s one independent bookstore, Pandemonium Booksellers, which took part in her Going Rogue book signing at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center. Sarah’s mother, Sally Heath, is a charter member of the Valley Republican Women’s Club, which sells a batch of Palin-family recipes for $5, but Palin has not been to any of their meetings since resigning as governor.

Her Wasilla social circle has narrowed practically to nothing. People who know Kristan Cole and Kris Perry, her closest local friends and advisers of longest standing, say that the relationships have deteriorated. Her former aides Meg Stapleton and Ivy Frye are said to have parted with Palin on bad terms.

The survey and the profile, taken together, point to one conclusion: As Palin’s public profile swells, the qualities upon which its legitimacy relies—piety, fiscal responsibility, family worth—become less and less believable.

Byard Duncan is a staff writer for Campus Progress and a contributing writer and editor at AlterNet.

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