Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has a new study, “Assessing the Impact of Sarah Palin on the Women’s Vote,” the best data-driven analysis of the ‘Palin effect’ on women voters thus far. The study, conducted 9/2-3 for the Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, surveyed 1356 women, inlcuding 1295 lv’s. Here’s the nut graph from the executive summary:

After viewing the acceptance speech of the first female vice presidential candidate for the Republican party, there was no positive electoral movement toward the Republican ticket among either married or unmarried women in these groups. Some unmarried women moved toward the Republican ticket, but an equal number moved against McCain and Palin.

The study also found that “unmarried women are much more skeptical” about Palin than married women and “significantly less likely…to believe that she is an asset to the Republican ticket.” Obama’s margin with unmarried women increased from 28 to 36 percent after the Palin nomination, though “largely because of a drop for McCain.” In addition the GQR memo on the survey noted,

Married women are divided (39 percent much or somewhat more likely, 36 percent much or somewhat less likely), while unmarried women are clearly turned off by the Republican Convention (27 percent much or somewhat more, 45 percent much or somewhat less).

The survey found that Obama has a 15 point lead among women lv’s overall, driven by his edge with unmarried women and younger unmarried women in particular. Interestingly, McCain’s slight lead with married women remains “unchanged since July.” Obama now holds a 55 to 32 percent lead with white, unmarried women, while he lags by 15 points among white married women (39 to 55 percent).
Meanwhile a new ABC News poll (505 adults, 4.5 moe), conducted 9/4 found,

Men are slightly more apt than women to say Palin’s experienced enough for the presidency, 46 percent to 39 percent, with more women unsure about it. Seventy-four percent of Republicans say she’s sufficiently experienced; 44 percent of independents and 21 percent of Democrats agree.

Clearly, polls indicate that the Palin nomination has not helped sway many voters toward the GOP thus far. For the Republicans, it’s all about cranking up registration and turnout among conservatives.

This isn’t important in the larger scheme of things, but as a longtime convention worker, I did want to comment on the strange technical difficulties that seem to have bedevilled some of the biggest speeches at the Republican Convention.
Yesterday we were informed that Sarah Palin had to fight a runaway teleprompter that didn’t pause for applause during her speech. The article on the subject cited “new equipment” as a problem (can’t imagine why they’d want to debut it during this particular speech), so maybe the GOPers were using some novel automated ‘prompter. The kind of teleprompters used in Denver, and so far as I know, everywhere in the past, are scrolled mechanically by an operator who closely follows the pace of the speaker. Moreover, in Denver a staffer was always on the podium with a hard copy of every speech, ready to run it to the lecturn if there are ‘prompter issues (that’s what happened briefly with Gov. Ted Strickland). Palin apparently had to rely on an older version of her speech that a campaign staffer happened to have in his coat pocket.
It’s to Palin’s credit that these problems didn’t affect her delivery; indeed, one of her signature lines, about hockey moms being pit bulls with lipstick, was reportedly ad libbed when some sign blocked her sight lines to the ‘prompter.
John McCain also appeared to have struggled with his teleprompter, though it’s not clear whether he had the same issues as Palin, or just hasn’t overcome his longstanding aversion to the technology. As I can tell you from countless rehearsals, some speakers simply can’t master the use of side-prompters, those transparent plates at the podium that many viewers mistake for bullet-proof glass shields. In shorter speeches, we always advise them to stick to the center ‘prompter, the giant screen at the back of the hall, and not worry about turning from side to side. But that gets pretty tedious-looking in a long speech like McCain’s.
‘Prompters aside, a lot of bloggers are having great sport today discussing some of the weird backdrops during McCain’s speech: first of all, a field of grass that in a narrow-frame shot looked just like the infamous “green screen” that drew so much mockery in an earlier Big Speech by McCain; and then, a photo of a North Hollywood middle school that appeared for no obvious reason, and that was apparently used in a West Wing episode.
Beyond production values and podium mechanics, I wondered several times during the Republican Convention about its speechwriting/vetting/rehearsal system. While some speeches were very good (Palin’s, Giuliani’s, and Huckabee’s, by most accounts), and others erratic but at some points effective (arguably McCain’s) there were an unusual number of poorly written and delivered speeches, not just in the bipartisan convention tradition of endless “message” redundancy, but in terms of grammer, coherence, and minimal oratorical competence. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle’s Wednesday speech, just before Rudy Giuliani’s successful attack-fest, was one of the worst written and delivered convention addresses I’ve ever watched or heard. She paused for applause after virtually every line, and often had to wait a while for it. Democratic speakers are always advised to forget about applause unless it’s thunderous, since television understates ovations. It really did look like Lingle hadn’t rehearsed at all, and that no one with much of an ear had reviewed her text.
There’s a lot of talk today that McCain’s acceptance speech showed signs of massive overworking, with the emotional power of the Mark Salter ending vitiated by the long, boring policy iteration that preceded it. But in addition, I noticed one very simple speechwriting error: in a relatively long and key passage comparing his views to those of Barack Obama, McCain began with his talking point and then rushed into his construction of Obama’s position, eliciting, predictably, a “boo” from the audience. Had he reversed the order, each graph would have elicited a cheer. And that’s what you want when you’re trying to sound like a post-partisan “maverick” who’s fighting “politics as usual.”
Again, none of this stuff matters much in the long run. But it’s worth noting for Democrats who chronically fear that bad as Republicans are at governing, they’re flawless at politics.

John McCain’s acceptance speech last night really did return his campaign to the same Square One it occupied when he nailed down the Republican presidential nomination so many months ago: a candidate with highly conventional Bushian policy positions on almost every issue, but who asks Americans to accept him as a “maverick” and a “reformer” based on the character forged by his horrific experience as a POW, as evidenced by a few heresies against party that he has largely since foresworn.
The most revealing detail of the speech was that for all the talk about serving country rather than party, and of wanting above all to clean up Washington, the only specific criticism of Republicans McCain could bring himself to make was one from the Right: that GOPers of the DeLay/Bush era came to power, forgot their conservative principles, and spent too much money. While true, the criticism isn’t very comforting to the majority of Americans who would now like their federal government to do more, not less, to deal with a variety of big national challenges, particularly coming from a candidate whose tax cut and defense spending promises would guarantee huge structural budget deficits for a long, long time.
Thus, his plea to swing votes last night to trust that he won’t represent “more of the same” came down almost entirely to his POW experience, which he did indeed talk about in an unusually raw and powerful way. To his credit, he tried to avoid the suggestion that Americans should award him the presidency as thanks for his personal sacrifices. His central argument was that his sufferings in the Hanoi Hilton freed him forever from allegiance to any cause other than country. But that claim runs up against the inconvenient reality that he wasn’t much of a “maverick” in Congress until he ran for president in 2000 against the candidate of the Republican establishment, and hasn’t shown any “maverick” tendencies at all since deciding to run for president a second time.
That’s why the balance of the McCain-Palin campaign is almost certainly going to resemble Wednesday night’s “message” more than last night’s: relentless attacks on Barack Obama. In close general election races, if you can’t occupy the “center” with your policy positions, the next best thing is to push your opponent out by describing him or her as extremist, or as fundamentally untrustworthy–a strategy that has the added benefit of making your own party base very happy. For all the “maverick” self-labeling by McCain and Palin during this convention, the very conventional attack politics of Karl Rove and company is where they are heading between now and election day.

There is usually a division of labor between the “positive” Presidential candidate and the “attack dog” Vice-President and other surrogates in a political convention – but this was downright ridiculous.
As today’s New York Times editorial says “Rather than remaking George W. Bush’s Republican Party in his own image, Mr. McCain allowed the practitioners of the politics of fear and division to run the show…he has decided he can have it both ways. He can talk loftily bipartisanship and allow his team to savage his opponents.”
In fact, the contrast between Wednesday night and Thursday night was so stark that the only real question is now whether McCain could actually still control the Republican Party even if he wanted to. Is it really his Party or Sarah Palin’s?
Democrats should quickly and energetically press this question – specifically in speaking to moderate and undecided voters. Is the real Republican Party “nice-guy” John McCain or conservative culture warrior Sarah Palin?
To get the ball started, here are a few ways this challenge can be presented in brief, sound-bite fashion.

“The McCain – Palin ticket offers a ‘Choice, not an Echo’ – and that’s just between the two of them”.
“Maybe McCain should demand a special debate – with Sarah Palin.”
“It sounds to me like John McCain disagrees with Sarah Palin more than he does with Barack Obama”
“Voting Republican will be hard this November – you’ll never know which Republican Party you’re voting for – John McCain’s or Sarah Palin’s.”
Refresh my memory, did McCain pick Palin or did Palin pick McCain?
“The most decent things McCain said on Thursday night would have gotten more applause in Denver then they did in St. Paul…….. and some of the worst things the Republicans said on Wednesday night could have been directly applied to some of the most decent things McCain said on Thursday night.”
“When McCain promised to attack corruption, the audience wasn’t sure whether to cheer or boo…and when McCain praised bi-partisanship the audience knew exactly whether they wanted to cheer or boo, but they also remembered that they were on TV.”
“Why is the Republican Party like The Incredible Hulk? — because you don’t want to see it when it’s angry.”

Over at The Stump, Michael Crowley asks about Obama’s next move:

McCain skilfully shifted the race’s momentum the morning after Invesco with his surprise Palin announcement. Now, the question is whether the Obama team can continue the week-versus-week parallel and come up with a similar attention-getter. In the past, Obama’s campaign has repeatedly demonstrated a marvelous sense of timing and an ability to rebound quickly after a setback. (As Jason Zengerle recently reported, for instance, Obama kept John Kerry’s promised endorsement in his pocket and sprang it as a comeback after losing New Hampshire.)

He wonders if the Obama campaign is holding an endorsement from Colin Powell in its pocket to kill GOP momentum coming out of its convention.
Maybe. Though, as Crowley says, Powell’s people beat back this rumor pretty effectively just a couple weeks ago.
I’d suggest the more likely (though much, much smaller) play: his fundraising numbers from August.
We already know that McCain raised $47 million for the month — no small total.
But given that Obama named his pick for vice president and pulled off an extremely effective Democratic convention, I’m assuming that his numbers are much higher. As a Democrat with a serious investment in his campaign, I know I should be downplaying expectations, but I’m still ready to be shocked by the totals when they finally come out.
What do you think? Would an $80 million month be enough to change the news cycle a bit?
How about $100 million?

Well, it took a while, but the Republican National Convention sure woke up last night, inspired by Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin into a howling, sneering, fist-shaking state of rage at the temerity of Barack Obama in offering himself for the presidency.
National political convention delegates of either party, heavily weighted with activists, always love red meat and whine or sit sullenly when they are deprived of it. But I witnessed nothing in Denver, not even during Brian Schweitzer’s stemwinder, that resembled the reaction to Giuliani and Palin. Feral roars greeted every thrust at Obama. At one point, delegates anticipating Palin’s pre-leaked shot at Obama’s community organizer background made so much noise that she struggled to get the line out. Since television tends to understate crowd noise, I can only imagine what it actually felt like down on the floor. These people are really furious and contemptuously dismissive about Barack Obama in a way that significantly exceeds Democrats’ antipathy towards John McCain. And you got the sense that they cheered (much more mildly) the positive lines about McCain’s supposed “reform” and “maverick” credentials as little more than the essential framing necessary to make invidious comparisons to Obama.
The big question is whether the attitude towards the Democratic nominee we saw expressed from the podium and the floor last night is communicable beyond the ranks of the party faithful.
Throughout Giuliani’s speech, I kept thinking, as a sometimes speechwriting professional: “He really needs to dial this down; he’s overdoing it.” Like the late comedian Red Skelton, Rudy was so cracked up by his own snarky humor that he interrupted his lines repeatedly to chortle at himself, and at the unbelievable thought that anyone could consider Obama qualified for the presidency. Giuliani’s always struggled with the perception that he’s at bottom a gloating bully who lives to humiliate his many enemies, and his performance last night may well have been undercut by his manner. More practically, his self-indulgence at the podium forced the cancellation of a biographical video about Palin, which might have tilted the balance of her presentation in a more positive direction.
As for Palin herself, no question, she’s passed her first big test, as most everyone anticipated. Her rapturous reception from the floor would have happened even if she had read the delegates the Minneapolis-St. Paul phone book, thanks to the strong belief among conservative activists that her selection represented a major victory in their struggle to control the GOP. But she delivered her lines well, and showed an impressive ability to keep smiling as she savaged Obama and excoriated the shadowy demons of “Washington.” Some people I know think her voice is grating, and while she did occasionally sound like she was channeling Frances McDormand’s character in Fargo (“You Betcha!”), maybe that will attract some votes right there in Minnesota.
But as with the whole evening, Palin’s performance must ultimately be judged by reactions outside the arena. At least two focus groups of persuadable women convened by Stan and Anna Greenberg reportedly showed a mixed response, with some viewers uncomfortable with Palin’s “mudslinging” towards Obama and still unconvinced of her own qualifications for high office.
Up until now I’ve been discussing these speeches in terms of style and tone. But it’s the substance, or lack thereof, that will now begin to get some serious scrutiny.
The Obama campaign quickly got out a very thorough truth-squad piece on the various attack lines deployed by Palin. Suffice it to say that those lines spanned the spectrum from light snarky jibes to distortions of Obama’s record and views, to bold-faced lies. Palin’s already getting hammered near and far for her fully rebuttable claim that she fought the “Bridge to Nowhere,” and to a lesser extent, for her naked pander to the parents of special-needs children (not the best appeal to make explicitly, given her record in Alaska). But more important in the long run are the assertions both she and Giuliani made about Obama’s lack of legislative accomplishments (much of the Obama truth-squad document is composed of a long list of these), and the gross mischaracterization of his tax proposals, which would actually cut taxes for families earning less than $250,000.
On a much broader front, the speeches we’ve heard in St. Paul are remarkable for how little they’ve involved discussions of policy, particularly on the economy. In Palin’s speech, oil drilling and the ancient totemic appeal to the magical properties of tax cuts were the only prescriptions offered for the U.S. economy. Health care? Not a word. The housing crisis? Ditto. Income inequality? Nada, or, to use the word chanted by delegates during Rudy’s attacks on Obama’s record, “zero.” As for foreign policy, the main thrust of the entire Republican Convention has been the dubious claim, unshared by a majority of Americans, that we are on the brink of total victory in Iraq, unless Obama takes office and continues the troop withdrawals that both Iraqi and U.S. leaders are already undertaking.
Finally, the entire “maverick” and “reform” and “change” mantras of the GOP convention, which we’ll hear a lot more about in McCain’s own speech tonight, are astonishingly audacious. You’d never, ever know from last night’s speeches that John McCain and Sarah Palin represent the incumbent party in the White House, the party that’s largely controlled “Washington” for the last eight years (and in Congress, until 2006, much longer than that), or that both of them support virtually all of George W. Bush’s domestic and international policies.
In the end, the Obama campaign’s big challenge now is to rebut the lies and slurs about his own record and views; expose the pattern of evasion and deception about the McCain-Palin ticket’s relationship to a deeply unpopular GOP; and get the contest refocused on issues, particularly the economy. Those delegates last night were undoubtedly “energized” by the Giuliani-Palin show, but they only get to vote once in November. It’s their friends and neighbors on the fence that matter now.

I have no idea what most of America thought about Sarah Palin’s speech last night. But I’m positive that it fired up the base of both parties.
Anyone who has spent any time at all reading/watching/listening to commentators over the last 10 hours knows that the Republicans loved that speech. Within minutes of each other, both Slate’s John Dickerson and The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder Twittered comments about how happy McCain’s aides were with Palin. On MSNBC this morning, Joe Scarborough just said that he watched the speech and realized he was watching the first female president of the United States. The posters on The Corner were ecstatic, each trying to outdo the other in their praise of the Alaska governor. You get the gist.
The reaction from the Democratic base hasn’t gotten as much airtime (it is the GOP convention, after all), but I’m going to wager it is just as strong. Midway through Palin’s speech, I pulled up the Obama website, clicked on the contribute button, and gave another contribution. I know at least three friends who did the same (and one who gave twice). On Facebook and on Twitter, my little corner of the political universe was fired up — folks were rubbing their hands in anticipation of Joe Biden taking on this hockey mom in the vice presidential debate. That holds just as true for the blogs I read. Certainly Sean’s friends and commentators on FiveThirtyEight.com had a similar reaction. My guess is that the Obama campaign saw the groundswell they were getting, and at 3:30 this morning, an email from David Plouffe landed in my inbox — I’d bet that the campaign gets a lot of $25 donations this morning.

The Palin speech was predictable enough, as were Giuliani’s and Romney’s liberal and government-bashing. What is a little surprising is that the GOP convention actuallly got whiter. From P.J. Huffstutter’s L.A. Times article, “A shrinking black presence at GOP convention“:

Out of 2,380 Republican delegates in St. Paul, only 36 were black, or 1.5%….That’s a jarring decline from four years ago, when the GOP, eager to chip away at the Democratic Party’s black voter base in the South and big cities, seeded the presidential convention with minorities, including 167 black delegates, according to a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

Quite a significant decline from even the embarrasssing ’04 figures for minority participation, and quite a striking contrast with the figures for the Democratic Convention, as Eli Saslow and Robert Barnes note in their WaPo article, “In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention“:

By comparison, 24.5% of the delegates — or 1,087 — who attended last week’s Democratic National Convention were black, according to officials with the Democratic National Committee.

The figures for Hispanics are not much better. As Barnes and Saslow note:

According to a CBS-New York Times poll released Sunday, 5 percent of delegates are Hispanic, the lowest percentage at a Republican convention since 1996.

The GOP Convention has featured only one African American speaker, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. After these two articles, they will probably try to squeeze in a couple more. You would think the GOP would try to do a little better. But don’t bet on it.

Here’s my nominee for the blandest news headline of the year, courtesy of CNN: “Palin to call for reform in convention speech.”
Wow, stop the presses. Think she’ll also “call for” putting country first? That could, of course, upset her friends in the Alaska Independence Party.
But here’s my favorite passage in the article:

Earlier Wednesday, Palin took a tour of the podium at the convention site. She walked through the nearly empty hall and spent about 10 minutes checking out the podium, telling reporters that she feels “great.”
“I’m excited to speak to Americans. This will be good. It’s about reform,” she said.

As many of you may know, any time a politician utters the words “It’s about,” you can be sure that “insert message here” will immediately follow.

Led by McCain campaign chieftain Steve Schmidt, the whole GOP/conservative chattering class is in full whine today, trying to discredit any questions about or criticism of Sarah Palin as representing media sexism (conservatives being well-known, of course, for their deep sensitivity to gender bias). Among other things, this line of attack is clearly a big shout-out to the dwindling but still significant ranks of disgrunted Hillary Clinton supporters, who famously, and with considerable justification, made the same complaints about media coverage of HRC.
But the bigger question is whether Sarah Palin herself, in her acceptance speech tonight, does some tastefully delivered whining of her own. To put it another way, does she cast herself as Everywoman–a highly sympathetic “hockey mom” who’s being beat up on by elitist Democrats and media figures–or as Superwoman–a highly acccomplished executive whose slim resume disguises a deep knowledge of public affairs and a demonstrated commitment to “reform?”
I’ve heard some political observers privately predict that Palin will go pretty heavily into her “personal story” to bond with working-class and/or female voters, in a latter-day version of the famous Nixon “Checkers Speech.” (For those who haven’t read about it, this was the 1952 speech wherein an embattled Veep nominee accused of benefitting from a slush fund saved his career with a heartstring-tugging evocation of his modest roots and lifestyle, and his refusal to give up the gift to his daughter of a dog named “Checkers.”). But while we’ll definitely hear about her large family, her apparent lack of wealth, and such blue-collar pastimes as the slaying and consumption of moose, I suspect Palin will leave most of the victimization claims to the campaign and the right-wing media, and focus instead on dealing with real concerns about her preparation for the White House that can’t be dismissed as reflecting sexism.
The already-tedious comparisons of her years of public service to Obama’s will only get the McCain-Palin ticket so far, and could eventually, like Dan Quayle’s constant comparisons of his resume to JFK’s in 1988, even backfire. After all, Obama’s significantly reduced if not eliminated fears about his own level of preparation by speaking fluently on a vast array of issues in the national spotlight of a very long campaign. Palin (or more accurately, the McCain campaign’s speechwriters) can’t match that in a single speech. But realistically, so long as she’s good at reading a teleprompter, there’s no reason to expect that she won’t pass her first big test.
One thing you won’t hear about tonight are her extremist views on a variety of hot-button issues. Yes, she will almost certainly mention her recent decision to have a child with Down Syndrome, and perhaps her own daughter’s even more recent decision to carry to term a pre-marital pregnancy. But she probably won’t go out of her way to make it clear that she would deny a choice in such matters to every other woman in America. She certainly doesn’t need to pander to conservative activists tonight. Deep in their bones, they are convinced that she is “one of them” on a level rarely attained by politicians. So they’ll be happy to let her perform strictly for the benefit of swing voters in her acceptance speech, cheering her “maverick” paens to bipartisanship and reform and all that stuff they don’t actually believe in (monomaniacal oil drilling, of course, is another matter!).
But Sarah Palin, and McCain-Palin, are hardly going to be out of the woods when the convention ends. The predictably positive media reviews she’ll earn with a minimally credible performance tonight will, ironically, undermine all the whining about media bias, and enable continued scrutiny of her record and views. Maybe she’ll be able to kick the “Troopergate” can down the road past election day, but maybe not. Her cozy relationship with the loony Alaska Independence Party could be a ticking time bomb. The vice presidential debate could be perilous, as it was for Dan Quayle. And the Obama campaign’s showing an early willingness to go after her and McCain’s extremist position on abortion, threatening their appeal to pro-choice women.
Michael Crowley at TNR has a more detailed analysis of what we might expect from Palin tonight. I agree with his conclusion that she’s positioned to meet or exceed low expectations. A little bit of Everywoman, and a first effort to look like Superwoman, is all she needs for now. What happens later is another matter.