Obama struggles in Nevada

Barack Obama continues to suffer from the Nevada blues. Only 44% of voters there approve of him to 53% disapproving and he ties Mitt Romney in a state that he won by 12 points in 2008. Along with New Hampshire, Nevada is probably the swing state where Obama has fallen the furthest.

There are two main things causing Obama problems in the Silver State. He's under water with independents, at 42/53.  And he's lost a lot of support with Democrats, only 78% of whom approve of him with 17% disapproving. He's also at 6/94 with Republicans, but that's pretty much par for the course. His hopes for any meaningful amount of crossover support faded a long time ago. While Obama's in good standing with Hispanics and African Americans in the state, he's at a woeful 36/61 with white voters, mirroring his trouble with them nationally.

As unpopular as Obama is, there's only one Republican who can catch up with him in the state and that's Mitt Romney. They tie at 46%. Romney has an unusual amount of appeal to Nevada Democrats- 27% of them have a favorable opinion of him and 13% say they would vote for him in a hypothetical match up with Obama. That's what sets him apart from the rest of the GOP field.

Obama leads the rest of the Republicans, but he doesn't match his 2008 margin of victory against any of them. He's up 49-46 against both Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, 47-43 against Ron Paul, and 49-41 against Michele Bachmann. Paul is actually the only one of the Republicans who leads Obama among independents, 45-43.

The Republican whose numbers really stand out in Nevada is Rick Perry.  Only 18% of voters in the state have a positive opinion of him, to 67% with a negative one. And he trails Obama by the widest margin, 51-41. Perry still seems to be thought as one of the two leading Republican candidates but when you see numbers like that it makes you wonder- is he really? At any rate the numbers here and in other swing states make it very clear that if Republicans want to have any hope they need to steer clear of Perry.

Nevada, along with Virginia, looks like it could be one of those states that's really at the epicenter of the political universe next year with both a Presidential race and a Senate race that for the moment look very much like toss ups.

Full results here

Comments

[nemov]

Perry's numbers aren't surprising. He's still relatively unknown.

a) Most press about Perry has been negative
b) Most people have never heard of him
c) Perry went negative at the CNN debate in Vegas

I caution against paying much attention to polls like this. If match-up polls meant anything Clinton, Obama, Carter, and Reagan would have never been elected.

[mikeel]

noticing in both OH and NV, Obama losing about 13-17% of the black vote--could be crucial

[atdnext]

One thing that really stands out for me is Obama only getting 79% of the African-American vote against Romney's 15%. Sorry, but I'm not seeing anything here to suggest that kind of AA defection from Obama (underperforming Kerry and Gore). And considering PPP's history of under-sampling likely Democratic voters, Obama's probably in at least slightly better shape here than this poll suggests at face value.

[Alcse]

If I'm the Obama campaign, I'm very optimistic about my chances of winning Nevada again in 2012. Take Harry Reid for e.g. he was in same situation against Sharon Angle, in fact, he was expected to lose. What happened on election day? Black and Latino voters came out in records numbers which eventually put him over the top. Anything is possible a yr from now.

If Romney is such a strong candidate...why is he tied and not leading the president?

[Eurowit]

Yes people, Black votes will make or break Obama in NEVADA. Please. How many electoral votes does this state have anyway? The GOP will have a lot of an easier time flipping New Hampshire and Maine, especially with Romney (8 EVs).

[dw]

New Hampshire (his backyard) and Nevada (Mormons) are also Romney strongholds. I wonder how much Obama would have won by in 2008 had Romney been the candidate.

[Mose]

The poll was of 500 people. 7% were black. So the black sub-sample represents only 35 people. The margin for error for a sample size that small is something like 16%. So I'd be cautious about drawing any conclusions about the black vote based on this data.

[atdnext]

We will have 6 EVs (electoral voters) next year... Which doesn't seem like much, until you add us with Colorado (9 EVs) and New Mexico (5 EVs) to make 20 Southwestern EVs that are nearly the same amount as Ohio or Pennsylvania. Add Arizona (11 EVs) into the mix (the Rocky Mountain poll this week showed Obama leading all the leading GOPers there), and you have a Southwestern bloc with more EVs than Florida!

The Southwest will be critical in this next election, and everything I've seen here makes me doubt the relative strength of the GOP here (including Romney). Especially as Romney's home foreclosure plan and record at Bain Capital get more attention, his glow will fade. Alcse is right that this election really seems to mirror the 2010 US Senate races here and in Colorado (that Democrats won).

[Ranjit]

Alcse,

Yes, at the end of the day obama/democrats are going to get the majority of black votes. But remember that, the enthusiasm among black is very bad. Unemployment rate is anywhere between 15 to 20 % among blacks. The turn out is going to be anemic among blacks. Also, think about college crowd which is struggling with lack of jobs and again enthusiasm is going to be very mute.

Meanwhile, conservatives and republicans are going to turn in huge numbers. If Obama is this close with republican candidate, undecided crowd will go for the challenger. This is always the case in the past

[Sophie]

Well, for a more relevant apples-to-apples comparison, you have Obama doing only 4 points worse than your last pre-2008-election poll