Obama struggling in Pennsylvania

If the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney and the election was today Barack Obama would probably lose Pennsylvania, fundamentally reshaping the 2012 electoral map.

Obama has dreadful poll numbers in the state, with only 42% of voters approving of him to 53% who disapprove. With white voters he's at only a 36/59 spread, numbers we're more used to seeing in the South than the Northeast. He's also at a much lower than normal 69% approval rating with Democrats while independents split against him 45/53 and only 9% of GOP voters give him good marks.

Obama and Romney are tied at 45% each but if you dig in on the undecided voters only 24% of them approve of Obama's job performance to 70% who disapprove. They may not be completely sold on Romney yet but for the most part if you don't approve of the incumbent President, you're not going to vote for him. If those folks really had to make a decision today it's likely they'd move in Romney's direction and hand him the state.

The Pennsylvania numbers are a clear reminder that Romney is probably the only one of the Republican candidates who can beat Obama at this point though. Obama leads Newt Gingrich by a 49-43 margin. Gingrich may be the top choice of GOP voters right now but he just doesn't have Romney's appeal to independents and Democratic voters.  While Romney leads Obama by 2 points with independents, Gingrich trails by 4. And while Romney gets 15% of the Democratic vote against Obama, Gingrich gets only 11%. Obama's prospects for reelection will get a lot brighter if Gingrich's momentum continues.

Gingrich actually only does the 4th best of the Republicans against Obama in Pennsylvania.  Second closest is Ron Paul who trails by 4 points at 46-42.  Paul does better with independents (a 3 pt lead over Obama) and with Democrats (16% of their vote) than any of the other Republican candidates. His problem, as our primary polling earlier today showed, is that he doesn't have much support in the GOP primary. Third closest against Obama is Rick Santorum, who trails 47-42. If nothing else that's a lot better than Santorum did in his 2006 Senate reelection bid.

Two Republicans manage to do worse than John McCain's 10 point margin of defeat in the state in 2008. Rick Perry, sporting an atrocious 17/66 favorability breakdown, trails Obama 51-38. To put Perry's favorability numbers in perspective, Sarah Palin was at 36/57 the last time we polled her in Pennsylvania. Perry makes her look like Ms. Popularity. Herman Cain's favorability numbers (22/61) aren't as bad as Perry's but he does the worst of the Republicans against Obama, trailing by 18 points at 53-35. We've already seen his bubble bursting some with GOP primary voters, but it's really bursting with the population at large.

Tom Corbett seemed to declare the electoral votes by Congressional District movement dead yesterday, but voters in the state actually support that by a 43-38 margin over the current winner take all system of electoral vote allocation. Republicans (53-24) and independents (45-35) support the change while Democrats (51-33) prefer the present system.

Pennsylvania should be Barack Obama's most worrisome state in 2012- if the Republicans can win there it opens a whole lot of scenarios for getting them to 270 electoral votes that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Full results here

Comments

[George]

Very strange that Obama has a big lead in Ohio but is struggling in PA!

[jeff]

This polls is clearly ignoring that its too early to say. In the end it depends on how much Obama can convince them to vote for him or not. You cannot predict how a state is going to vote this early in the election season. Seems like PPP and most opinion polls like to ignore that fact and sell it off as this is how its going to happen.

[Alan Snipes]

Well, this poll shows that Pennsylvania will be tough. However, I am encouraged by the fact that Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in the last five Presidential elections.
In the final analysis, I think Obama will pull it out here. Curiously, Obama is polling better in Ohio than Pennsylvania and Ohio is slightly more Republican than Pennsylvania. However, if Obama can't carry Pennsylvania, he will probably lose.

[Jay]

I only wish you had broken down the numbers by region. For those that watch Pa. closely, it is axiomatic that Philadelphia is underpolled which is why on election day the Democrats seem to do 1-2% better than the final polls will show. Additionally, to get a real handle on what will happen, you must know what is going on in the Philadelphia suburbs. This area, more than any other in PA is quite fickle and becoming more unpredictable. If Obama is doing poorly in this area of the state, then his chances of carrying the entire state are diminished. Those suburban voters who are economic conservatives and social liberals are the swing ones in this election and if they trend Republican, Obama will lose.

[David Donovan]

A couple of people have noted that it seems odd that the President is polling better in Ohio than in Pennsylvania. I suspect that Democrats generally, including the President, are getting a boost in the Midwest because of the rabid partisanship and extreme right-wing agendas being pursued by Republicans there. We've seen a government shutdown in Minnesota, recalls and mass protests in Wisconsin, and a citizen's veto in Ohio, but we haven't seen nearly the same level of political brinkmanship and citizen revulsion in Pennsylvania. That could help to explain some of these numbers.

[Steve]

I have a question for PPP on the favorability question of candidates. I have long taken note that the favorability of the Republican candidates is almost always in negative territory but I really wonder if the favorable vs unfavorable is really realistic, because it doesn't allow an in between option like 'somewhat favorable' or 'somewhat unfavorable'. For instance, in this poll, it shows that voters regard Romney unfavorably by a whopping 51%-32% margin while they disapprove of Obama just 53%-42%, yet the 2 candidates are tied with the edge likely going to Romney.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of cooking the results or anything - I'm just trying to understand why your candidate unfavorable generally seem to be way higher than in other surveys? Is there something I'm missing?

[Tom Jensen]

The main reason the favorability numbers come out so bad for the Republicans is that only 50-60% of GOP voters express a positive opinion of most of them (because they're supporting another candidate) while almost all Democrats express a negative opinion of each of them. Once the GOP has a nominee that person presumably will end up at least in the 70-80% favorability range within their party and that will bring their overall numbers back closer to even or positive range.

[Dustin Ingalls]

jeff: Nowhere did we say anything about what PA would do a year from now. In fact, Tom said, "If those folks really had to make a decision today it's likely they'd move in Romney's direction and hand him the state." The challenge is bringing up his share of the blue-collar, white Democratic and independent vote between now and then.

[Steve]

Thanks, Mr Jensen, for the informative explanation. It makes a lot of sense.

[Obama 2012]

Democrats should be attacking Romney 100% day & night starting yesterday for two reasons:

(1) if he ends up as the nominee (which I still think is likely despite Gingrich's gains) then it's important to drive up the negatives on Romney as high as possible.

(2) the biggest attack on Romney is his flip flopping which should be a negative to GOP primary voters as well as to voters in general... thus by focusing their attacks on Romney now they could decrease the chance of Romney as the nominee... leading to Gingrich as nominee... leading to Obama's reeleciton.

[smintheus]

The fact that Romney barely polls higher than oddballs like Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul speaks volumes about how weak a candidate he is.

[dominic]

>>Steve

They're in the middle of a primary campaign, Paul supporters don't want to say they like Romney, Gingrich supporters don't want to say the like Perry, and on and on and on. It looks bad for their candidates.

[D]

You only polled Pennsylvania. Now poll Florida, poll North Carolina, poll Virginia...poll states that Obama won in 2008. See how weak he is, and how much he harms the rest of the party down-ticket.

A new poll shows Obama is 10 points down to Romney in New Hampshire - Obama won NH in 2008.

A new poll shows that his favorability in New Jersey is 37%. 37%!

If Obama is the nominee, and he has to fight for places like Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Wisconsin and Michigan (I saw a poll there that blue collar workers are now against Obama, and whites have completely turned against him), if he has to fight for these states that should be walkaways for Democrats (and he may win them in the end, but he will have to spend resources to keep them), then Obama can raise $10 billion and it will not help him.

[Multitude]

It's unfortunate and brings question to the methodology that while RealClearPolitics has Bachmann at more than twice the polling numbers than Santorum, you leave the single woman Republican candidate off the polling.

[Steve]

Another issue with Pennsylvania is its "T" political shape. There's Philly in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest and the rest is pretty conservative. Philly and Pittsburgh came out strong for Obama in '08, and the "T" stayed home due to lack of enthusiasm for McCain. This time, the situation is reversed. The "T" is highly motivated to remove Obama from office - they don't care who, just not Obama. The cities will have a tough time matching the '08 turnout, due to lower approval numbers. The best way to win PA would be to mount a primary challenge and nominate someone else.

[NRH]

Anyone questioning why various people were left off the ballot clearly hasn't been paying much attention to PPP or you'd already know the basis PPP uses for picking who goes on the regular presidential polls. Likewise, somebody complaining that PPP needs to poll North Carolina not only hasn't been paying attention, but didn't have the wit to look at the poll that was just released three weeks ago, where PPP did in fact poll North Carolina, and Florida and Virginia are both options in the voting, not having been done in a while (and the race changes frequently as the Republican frontrunner shifts around).

[Dan]

Still waiting on:

Bob Casey's approval numbers
Tom Corbett's approval numbers
Bob Casey in a match-up with various Republicans
PA's approval/disapproval of Same-Sex Marriage
Jeff Flake against Don Bivens/Richard Carmona
And Arizona's approval/disapproval of Same-Sex Marriage