McCain Needs to Widen Base

McCain Needs to Widen Base
September 2, 2008; Page A2

The good news for Republicans is that Gov. Sarah Palin seems to be exciting the previously, and famously, unexcited Republican Party base.

The bad news is that an excited base is necessary but insufficient for Republicans to win this year. To prevail, Sen. John McCain has to reach beyond the base vote that was sufficient to win the last two presidential races.

Thus, the fundamental gamble Sen. McCain took in picking Gov. Palin as his running mate is that she can both excite the base and reach well beyond it. If she can't, the gamble won't succeed.

The stakes in the Palin gamble grew even higher Monday, when the Alaska governor announced that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five-months pregnant. That raises unanticipated questions about how the social and religious conservatives, whose support for her has been taken for granted, will react.

The risk, of course, is that they might see the unplanned pregnancy as a sign of deficient family values. And if social conservatives recoil, one of the fundamental reasons for going the Palin route will wither.

Initially, though, the reaction on the right seems to be the opposite: a rallying around Gov. Palin and her daughter. "Her daughter is marrying the father, and under the circumstances doing the right thing, and this is how her supporters will view it," says Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican activist and consultant. "It is a nonissue, and if the Democrats and media come down too hard it will deepen enthusiasm and support for Gov. Palin."

But even if social conservatives remain enthused, that won't be enough. Put bluntly, Gov. Palin has to draw in more independents and soft Democrats, convincing them that she will help shake up Washington, than she puts off with her lack of experience.

In that sense, the Palin choice reflects in one nice, neat package the strategic quandary the McCain campaign faces as it works through the hurricane-plagued Republican convention here. Sen. McCain can't win without an energized party base of conservative activists who will show up in force at the polls and do the shoe-leather work needed to get others out as well.

But unlike when President George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004, it appears impossible this time to win a "turnout election" -- that is, an election in which Republicans can prevail simply by getting more of their team out to vote than the other side does. The GOP team has shrunk too much for that.

"If the Palin selection does nothing more than generate enthusiasm among the base, then it will have been a failure," says Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who helps conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. "Simply put, the GOP base is significantly smaller than it was four years ago, and a jack-up-the-base strategy cannot win this time around."

Here's the strategic problem Sen. McCain faces. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, 43% of those surveyed identified themselves as Democrats, while just 34% identify themselves as Republicans. By contrast, in August 2004, Republicans actually had a 39% to 38% edge in party identification.

Worse for Sen. McCain, that smaller base isn't very intense. When voters were asked whether they were excited about their presidential preference, just 12% of McCain voters said they were excited, while 46% of Sen. Barack Obama's voters said they were. That is a potentially fatal intensity gap.

Here's where Gov. Palin comes in. She is a virtual unknown to most Americans, but she has become a sweetheart to the conservatives at the party's base. Her antiabortion views, her anticountry-club image, even her crusades against the party establishment in her state all appeal to core conservatives.

"She brings to the table an energized conservative base that was lacking a bit," says Mr. Greg Mueller. And that conservative base, he adds, "is absolutely crucial in this campaign, given it is this base that knocks on doors, rings the phones and fliers the strip malls and the churches to get the vote out."

The harder question is the Palin reach beyond the base. On that front, the easy assumption has been that she would have a special ability to convert some of those women who supported Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and now are so upset that she didn't get it that they are willing to migrate toward the first woman on a Republican national ticket.

But how many of those Hillary women are really open to the Palin lure? The Journal/NBC News poll suggests that some certainly are. Among voters who backed Sen. Clinton in the primaries but now don't support Democratic nominee Barack Obama, six in 10 are women. They tend to be older, and fully 65% say their ideology is moderate or conservative. Half of them have a negative view of Sen. Obama.

So there would seem to be some Clinton women who might be open to voting Republican. But many others -- those who identify themselves as liberals, for example -- aren't likely to bite, so Gov. Palin's draw has to be broader than that.

Knowing that, Republicans are calculating that she also reinforces the McCain image as a maverick reformer who is willing to shake up the status quo. That, much more than her appeal to the party base or her appeal to women, is the standard by which the pick will be judged.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com