Fairleigh Dickinson U. Poll: Alaskans Find Biden More Qualified for President than Palin

By Lee Russ

Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 07:16 PM

Interesting results from Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind Poll of voters in Delaware and Alaska on whether they think Palin or Biden is more qualified to become President....

While the poll found that, on most issues, voters in each state generally favored their homegrown politician, the poll respondents in the two states do agree with those in Delaware that Biden is better prepared to be President and to handle an unexpected international crisis.

On the qualifications for president, generally, Alaskans favor Biden 43 to 37, while respondents in Delaware prefer Biden 69 to 18. On who could better handle an unexpected international crisis, Alaskans chose Biden by 44 to 32, while Biden was preferred in Delaware by a margin of 73 to 14.

The poll included 601 randomly selected likely voters statewide in Delaware and another 601 likely voters statewide in Alaska. Both surveys were conducted by telephone from September 17 through September 21 and carry a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points for each population.

Palin did get very high approval ratings from both Dems and Repubs in Alaska for her performance as Governor. On a tangential point, it's kind of odd that, in a state which approves strongly of Palin's performance as Governor, a majority of the voters surveyed in Alaska said they were pro choice on the issue of abortion.