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1,700 likely retiree voters were surveyed about the 2008 Presidential election by a non-profit advocacy group, ProtectSeniors.Org, resulting in great news for Senator Hillary Clinton, good news for Senator John McCain, and bad news for Rudy Giuliani, former New York City Mayor. In addition, retirees caution Congress to pay less attention to steroids in baseball.
Of those surveyed, only 56% selected a presidential candidate. 43.9% of the surveyed identified themselves as Republican, 31.8% as Democrats, and 20.9% identified themselves as Independent voters.
Among Democrat respondents, Hillary Clinton holds an almost insurmountable lead. Senator Clinton was favored by 48.2%; more than the combined total of John Edwards 18.9%, Barack Obama 17.7%, Dennis Kucinich 2.7% and Mike Gravel 0.6%. Among these respondents, 11.9% are looking for other options.
Among Republican respondents, John McCain holds a comfortable but not an insurmountable lead, while the survey brings especially bad news to the Giuliani campaign. McCain is preferred by 36.8% of likely retiree voters. He is followed by Mitt Romney at 26.3%, Rudy Giuliani 17.4%, Mike Huckabee 7.4%, Ron Paul 4.7%, and Alan Keyes (0.8%). 5.4% of these respondents indicated they were considering other options.
Among senior retirees categorizing themselves as Republicans, Giuliani trails front runner, McCain, by 2 to 1 and is 9 points behind Mitt Romney. Among Independent voters the former NY Mayor comes in 6th place with 5.6%, trailing McCain and Romney on the GOP side and all three Democratic frontrunners.
Among the Independent voters, Senator McCain (22.4%) leads Mitt Romney (20.4%), Hillary Clinton (18.8%), Barack Obama (9.0%) and John Edwards (7.3%).
“This is further evidence of Senator McCain’s amazing comeback,” said Eileen Lawrence, Secretary-Treasurer of ProtectSeniors.Org. “A few months ago Rudy Giuliani seemed destined to be the Republican nominee and Senator McCain’s campaign was on life support. Now Senator McCain is leading everyone and Mayor Giuliani is finishing sixth.”
Congress also did not fare well in an internet poll conducted from January 22-24, 2008:
*** 95% of respondents said they do not approve of the job done by Congress during the 2007 session;
*** 94% said Congress has better things to do than hold hearings looking into steroid use in Major League Baseball; and
*** Just less than one-third of likely voters said they intend to vote for
Congressional incumbents (31.9%), with 68.2% indicating that they are seriously considering new representation in the Congress.
Leading foreign policy issues were: War in Iraq (38.9%); Immigration Reform (25.2%); and Homeland Security (26.7%)The top domestic issues were the Economy (42.9%), Retiree Healthcare Benefits Protection (36.4%), Affordable & Accessible Healthcare (24.6%), Social Security & Medicare Reform (5.4%) and Energy & Environment (1.6%).
Light of Reason Observation 1: Based upon the lack of concern expressed by the retirees for the Global Climate Change issue, it can’t be determined whether those surveyed do not have an understanding of the man made threat to life on our planet or those surveyed lack concern for the welfare of following generations.
Light of Reason Observation 2: As good a survey as it was and I presume they surveyed their members, it may have had different results, if the retirees surveyed were from a more representative cross-section of the population,
About ProtectSeniors.Org:
ProtectSeniors.Org is a not-profit retiree association representing more than 45,000 corporate and municipal retirees from over 20 industries, including AT&T, IBM, Lucent, Merck, Nortel, Raytheon, SBC, States of California & New Jersey, TXU Energy, US West, Wachovia, Wyeth Labs and Verizon.
For more information, please visit: http://www.protectseniors.org.
Source for this post: ProtectSeniors.Org
Website: http://www.protectseniors.org/