[AGL] President Rice?

[Harry Edwards]

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: 
Front page

Feb. 20, 2006, 3:11AM

Poll finds readiness for female president

Support grows for run by Rice in '08, but fewer favor Clinton

By STEWART M. POWELL
Copyright 2006 Hearst News Service

WASHINGTON - Growing numbers of Americans oppose a presidential bid by 
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in 2008 — and favor a run by 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — amid broad public willingness to 
elect a woman as president, according to a nationwide poll released 
Sunday.

The Presidents Day survey conducted for Hearst Newspapers by the Siena 
Research Institute of Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., covered 1,120 
registered voters and was completed Feb. 10.

Some 48 percent of survey participants said Rice "should run" for 
president at the conclusion of President Bush's second term, an 
increase of 6 percentage points over a similar survey a year ago.

Clinton saw opposition to a presidential bid grow over the same period. 
About 44 percent of respondents now say Clinton "should not run" for 
president in 2008 — up from 37 percent who felt that way last year.

The percentage of registered voters who say Clinton "should run" 
slipped from 53 percent to 51 percent in the past year, as support for 
a Rice candidacy increased, from 42 percent to 48 percent.

The survey found that 79 percent of participants were willing to vote 
for a woman as president, and 64 percent said the nation was "ready" 
for one.

The survey did not test a head-to-head race between Clinton and Rice.

The margin of error for the survey in both years was 2.9 percentage 
points. That could mean that Clinton's 2 percentage point drop in the 
"should run" category may not represent an actual change.

The survey found that a majority of registered voters thought a female 
president would handle national security-related issues as well as a 
male president, including serving as commander-in-chief of the armed 
services.

Douglas Lonnstrom, director of the Siena Research Institute, said the 
findings, coupled with results from a comparable poll by his 
organization last year, suggest the nation is on the cusp of a dramatic 
political change.

"As things stand now, I see a real possibility that a woman will be 
elected president in 2008," said Lonnstrom, a professor of finance and 
statistics and member of the American Association for Public Opinion 
Research. "Disapproval of President Bush has opened voters' eyes to 
alternatives — and women benefit from that."

The latest nationwide Gallup Poll showed 56 percent of respondents 
disapproving of Bush's job performance and 39 percent approving.

Sally Friedman, a political scientist at the State University of New 
York at Albany, cautioned that the generic support for a female 
president reflected in the poll could decline when voters get closer to 
weighing the strengths and weaknesses of actual candidates.

"Right now the election is more than two years away and pretty 
hypothetical," said Friedman, who studies women in politics. "That will 
change, the closer we get."

The survey detected a wide disparity of views between Democrats and 
Republicans, with 91 percent of Democrats expressing their willingness 
to elect a woman compared with 68 percent of Republicans.

The back-to-back Siena College surveys conducted a year apart showed 
that 28 percent of registered voters think the nation is not ready for 
a female president in 2008. Among those, 23 percent said the country 
would be ready by 2012, 16 percent said it would be ready by 2016 and 
17 percent said the U.S. would "never" be ready.

"The big winner in our poll is Condoleezza Rice," Lonnstrom said. "She 
has projected a good, strong powerful image over the past year, and she 
benefits from the anti-Hillary vote."

Rice, 51, a former provost of Stanford University and a trained Soviet 
scholar, has been on the world stage for the past year carrying out 
diplomatic initiatives as the nation's second black secretary of state.

Clinton, 58, a career lawyer and former first lady, has been 
campaigning for the past year to win re-election to the Senate from New 
York this November, as well as taking public positions that often make 
her a favorite target of conservatives.

"Hillary Clinton remains a very polarizing figure across our country — 
people either love her or hate her," Lonnstrom said.

Scholars say the nation's readiness to elect a woman stems in part from 
voters seeing so many other nations elect women, including recent 
elections of women to lead Germany, Chile and Liberia.