Obama up 5 on Romney nationally

PPP's first national poll of 2012 finds Barack Obama with his best standing against Mitt Romney since last May, right after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama leads Romney 49-44.

It's not as if Obama's suddenly become popular.  He remains under water with 47% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. But Romney's even less popular, with only 35% rating him favorably while 53% have a negative opinion of him. Over the last month Romney's seen his negatives with independents rise from 46% to 54%, suggesting that the things he has to say and do to win the Republican nomination aren't necessarily helping him for the general. Obama's turned what was a 45-36 deficit with independents a month ago into a 51-41 advantage.

One thing that really stands out in this poll is the extent to which Obama has claimed the middle.  He's up 68-27 on Romney with moderates.  He also leads by 20 points with voters under 45, a group there's been some concern about slippage with, and he has a 66-30 advantage with Hispanics.

Ron Paul matches Romney's performance against Obama, also trailing by 5 points at 47-42.  Beyond those two Newt Gingrich trails by 7 at 49-42, Rick Santorum has an 8 point deficit at 50-42, and Rick Perry trails by 11 points at 51-40.

Stephen Colbert wants to run for President but he's not on the ballot in South Carolina. Americans Elect is on the ballot in a lot of states but doesn't have a candidate. Could Colbert and Americans Elect's interests intersect? We find Colbert getting 13% in a hypothetical third party run for President, compared to 41% for Obama and 38% for Romney.  A Colbert bid could be a blessing in disguise for the GOP. His voters go for Obama over Romney 52-38 in a straight head to head, so his presence as a potential candidate works to the Republicans' advantage.

36% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 28% with a negative one.  His 36% favorability is better than the entire GOP field. Romney's at 35%, Santorum at 30%, Paul at 27%, Gingrich at 26%, and Perry at 21%.  Colbert's popular with Democrats (47/21) and independents (43/26) but not with Republicans (18/39) despite his best efforts to run as one of their Presidential candidates.

In a more plausible third party scenario Gary Johnson gets 7% as the Libertarian candidate to 47% for Obama and 40% for Romney. His voters go 33-27 for Romney in a head to head so his bid is of slight benefit to Obama.

Full results here

Comments

[pbrower2a]

Mitt Romney is beginning to look increasingly like Mike Dukakis -- at first sight a competent technocrat until one looks deeper.

It could be that people are beginning to look at how Mitt Romney made his money. Hint: unlike the case with Lee Iacocca it is at least as much ruin than rescue. The Mordred-like assaults upon Mitt Romney from Newt Gingrich are beginning to hurt, and if the President is in deep-enough trouble in September and October he can revive them.

[Brian Routh]

that's why the republicans are running Romney..they want their man Obama to win!

[mikeel]

CNN and ABC/Wapo show Obama only getting 55% of moderates, and the latter poll has Obama trailing 54-41 among indies.

[Ed in NJ]

Amazing when you think about it. The Republicans have been campaigning against Obama for over 3 years now, and they still can't beat him head to head. It's even worse if you look at electoral college votes. This is shaping up to be Clinton-Dole II

[jeff]

sigh Colbert is not going to run for president. He's making a very good point about the super pacs.

[Jay]

In looking at the cross-tabs one could argue that too many Democrats were sampled which is why other major polling organizations are showing essentially a tie. (see real clear politics). If you have too many Dems in your poll, well, you know the rest of it.

[Bill Mitchell]

Lol, well it is PPP after all. I don't even have to look. I will just assume that Democrats were oversampled by 8 to 12 points.

However, according to Gallup and Rasmussen, Republicans now outnumber Democrats. Oh well, the truth never got in PPP's way before.

[Bill Mitchell]

Wait, what? We are to believe that Obama leads Romeny 2:1 among moderates? Lol, what a complete joke.

[Brad M]

These poll #s surely are skewed. Colbert should be in the high 30s.

[George]

How much do national polls matter when state by state poll matters. In 2000 Gallup had Bush ahead by 7, but when you looked at state by state poll, it was a different story.

[Stephen]

By the time the repubs are nominating this clown the repubs will be running so fast in the other direction that Willard will be having to spend his fortune getting an audience to stay and cheer his speecifian.

[Peter Cornstalk]

Romney 2012 = McCain 2008 = Obama wins in 2012

Ron Paul is the only viable choice.

[RonPaul.se]

At Fox News the experts say that Mitt Romney can't win without Ron Paul supporters. I guess that makes Mitt Romney unelectable and Ron Paul electable?!

[Todd Dugdale]

Obama wins female voters by a minimum of 14 points, and a majority of women against any Republican. Romney fails to win a majority of male voters. That's a demographic break that benefits Obama nationwide, as opposed to minorities, evangelicals, and "very conservatives", which tend to be concentrated.

Romney would have to win at least 70% of the (8%) "undecided" white voters to win. Those undecideds may not be in love with Obama, but 58% looks like Romney's ceiling with whites. That's probably not enough to win, even if he ultimately reaches that ceiling. Dubya won with 55%, but he had much stronger minority support than Romney does, and whites were a larger share of the electorate in 2004 than now.

Romney's base is not going to let him move toward the centre after the primaries, just as we saw with McCain. Why choose a 'moderate' and then force them to campaign as a wingnut? Thanks, wingnuts everywhere.

[Steve]

They only got their sampling wrong by 12 points. It's actually +6 GOP NOT +6 Democrat...
01-15-12
38% Dem
44% GOP

01-08-12
38% Dem
44% GOP

12-30-11
38% Dem
43% GOP
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

[Doc Vega]

It is well known that opinion polls have been designed not to tap the general opinion of the public but instead are used to manipulate public opinion in order to push policies. There's no way in hell Obama could win again, but the White House propaganda will continue until the end!

[Lorin Kusmin]

I would guess that most "undecided" Democrats will eventually support Obama and most "undecided" Republicans will wind up supporting Romney. But I would like to see more information about the voters who are both undecided and independent. I would guess that most of them disapprove of both Obama and Romney, but what else do we know about them? Can we tell how many are Democrat-leaning vs Republican-leaning? Liberal vs moderate vs conservative? More analysis of this group might give us a better idea which way they are likely to go in the end. But you might need to aggregate data from several polls to get a big enough smaple to be meaningful.

[Todd Dugdale]

If you want Rasmussen polling results and methodology, maybe you should be going to Rasmussen's web page instead of posting here that PPP doesn't do things the way Rasmussen does.

The 2010 election polling showed that Rasmussen's results exhibited *ten times* the bias toward Republicans than PPP did, and PPP didn't weight for party ID then, either. They were pretty accurate then, without trying to duplicate Rasmussen's methods.

PPP gets the sample that they get. It's all completely transparent, unlike Rasmussen's "likely voter" screen - which is basically a smiley face with the words "trust me" superimposed. Of course, no one really knows if Rasmussen's "nationwide" sample is disproportionately rural or red states, either. Just the PID breakdown.

If you don't like PPP's free polling, ask for your money back and quit whining that it doesn't support your pre-conceived notions.

[Emma]

You didn't truly discuss a Colbert candidacy with a straight face, did you? Really?

[Obama 2012]

It's humorous to see people claim that PPP is wrong because they aren't doing it like Rasmussen when Rasmussen had terrible results in 2010.

Rasmussen's Republican Bias: http://www.thepresidentialcandidates.us/rasmussen-reports-republican-bias/1297/

[Justin]

Wait you think Colbert fans would vote for the Republican nominee in the actual election?

[the_awesomeness]

This polling is proven to be bunk by the fact that it credits Gary Johnson with 7%. He'll be lucky to maintain the .5-1% past Libertarian Party Candidates have received.

[George]

After PPP's performance in SC I bet this poll is right and more accurate than other polls from ABC and CBS.