Rasmussen reported on Wednesday:
In a very early look at Election 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are essentially even.
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows Romney attracting 43% of the vote while Obama earns support from 42%. In April, Obama held a five-point edge over Romney.
The news continues to get better for Romney. Public Policy Poll’s most recent survey also puts Mitt up by a point against Obama:
For the first time since last July Barack Obama does not lead Mitt Romney in PPP’s monthly national poll on the 2012 Presidential race. Romney has now pulled into a tie with the President at 45%.
Obama’s approval rating this month is 46% with 48% of voters disapproving of him. There are 2 things particularly troubling in his numbers: independents split against him by a 44/49 margin, and 16% of Democrats are unhappy with the job he’s doing while only 10% of Republicans give him good marks. Republicans dislike him at this point to a greater extent than Democrats like him and that will be a problem for him moving forward if it persists.
Romney takes advantage of those 2 points of weakness for Obama. He leads the President by 9 points with independents at 46-37. And he earns more crossover support, getting 13% of the Democratic vote while only 8% of Republicans are behind Obama.
Further analysis by PPP concludes that the already wide electability gap between Romney and the rest of the GOP field is widening, and that Obama faces an uphill battle against those who are currently undecided:
An extremely wide electability gap has developed between Romney and all the rest of the Republican candidates. Everyone else we tested trails Obama by at least as much as John McCain’s 2008 margin of defeat and in most cases more. Obama’s up 7 on Michele Bachmann at 48-41, 9 against Tim Pawlenty at 48-39, 12 versus Herman Cain at 48-36, and as usual has his largest lead in a match up with Sarah Palin at 53-37.
Here’s an important note on all of this early 2012 polling though: Obama’s numbers are worse than they appear to be on the surface. The vast majority of the undecideds in all of these match ups disapprove of the job Obama’s doing but aren’t committing to a candidate yet while they wait to see how the Republican field shakes out. Here’s an idea of where these various match ups might stand once all voters have made up their minds:
-In the Obama/Romney head to head 21% of undecideds approve of Obama and 61% disapprove. If you allocate them based on their approval/disapprove of Obama, Romney would lead 52-48.
These two polls provide further evidence that Obama is losing hemorrhaging the support of independents and undecided voters, and that they are conversely warming up to Mitt Romney – I suspect this is due to his laser-like focus on the number one issue on people’s minds today: jobs. There is still a lot of time left, but it’s comforting to know that if the election were held today it’s likely Mitt Romney would be the victor.
Obama has never really taken the economy seriously. His actions, such as promising to veto the cut, cap and balance bill (even though it gets 2-1 approval in polls), show that he is out of touch with the American job seeker and is not qualified to lead lead the nation. Each day Romney continues to look more and more presidential as he makes the economy, unemployment and the national debt his singular focus of concern.
Obama is not working. Mitt Romney for President!
