Arithmetics

The McCain campaign incessantly touts Sarah Palin as the country's most popular governor. The number I've most frequently heard for her approval ratings is 80%, so that's the percent I shall use. Also, I'm unsure if the polls are among registered voters or general population. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to use general population numbers.

According to the census bureau's 2007 estimate, Alaska has 683,478 people. 80% approval rating would mean that 546,782 approve of her. Let's translate that to other states. In California, Gov. Schwarzenegger would have a 1.5% approval rating with those numbers. In Florida, Gov. Crist would have a 3% approval rating. Illinois' extremely assholish governor would have 4.3% approval with those numbers. Even in Hawaii, that's only a 42.6% approval rating. In Ohio, it would be 4.8% approval. In New York, it would be 2.8%

While the state of Alaska does seem to approve o her very highly as a governor, I feel it's somewhat misleading to tout her as the nation's most popular governor in the country. Shortly before the recall election in California, Governor Gray Davis had a 24% approval rating. Even if Palin had 100% approval in Alaska, the amount of people approving of his job was 12 times higher than what hers could ever be, and he got fucking kicked out of office.