Obama up big in Washington

PPP's newest Washington numbers find Barack Obama with an approval rating over 50% in the state and double digit leads over all of his potential Republican opponents. 51% of voters think he's doing a good job to 45% who give him poor marks. He's on positive ground largely because there are twice as many Republicans (12%) who approve of him as there are Democrats (6%) who disapprove.

What might be most interesting about the Washington numbers is how Mitt Romney stacks up against Obama compared to the other Republican candidates. Long perceived as the most electable GOP hopeful, Romney fares only the third best in Washington with both Rick Santorum and Ron Paul coming a few points closer to Obama.

Santorum's the strongest of the Republican candidates, trailing Obama 52-40. Paul does next best with a 51-38 deficit. As we frequently find to be the case he does the best of the GOP hopefuls with independents, trailing Obama by only 2 at 43-41. Romney trails by 15 at 53-38, and the weakest of the Republicans is Newt Gingrich who's down 20 at 55-35.

Washington provides a pretty good example of the toll this campaign has taken on Romney's image. Last May when we polled the state his favorability was a -13 spread at 34/47. Since then he's dropped another 23 points and it's now -36 at 27/63.

He's gone from nearly break even with independents at 38/42 to incredibly unpopular at 28/59. He's gone from 66% of Democrats disliking him to 88%. And even with Republicans his negatives have shot from 29% to 40%. Maybe if he wins the nomination some of these numbers will start to recover but for now the campaign seems to have hurt him with pretty much all groups of the electorate.

The other thing Washington does is provide more evidence that the 2012 electoral landscape will be more similar to 2008 than 2000 or 2004. In the last 2 months PPP has polled 4 states that Al Gore won by 5 points or less in 2000 that Barack Obama went on to win by double digits in 2008. In all 4 of those states Obama is again headed for a double digit victory...they are not reverting to their 2000/2004 competitiveness:

State	2000	2004	2008	2012 polling v. Romney
Michigan	Gore +5	Kerry +3	Obama +16	Obama +16
Minnesota	Gore +2	Kerry +3	Obama +10	Obama +10
New Mexico	Tie	Bush +1	Obama +15	Obama +15
Washington	Gore +5	Kerry +7	Obama +17	Obama +15

Obama's not going to have to fight hard to keep blue states in his column the way Al Gore and John Kerry do, and that makes the electoral map shape up pretty well for him. It gives him the chance to be aggressive and have several different paths to 270 with a base of about 230 electoral votes he can pretty solidly count on.

Full results here

Comments

[Alex]

Michigan still might be competitive, and certainly worth spending money on, as there is an important Senate race there as well

[George]

Actually what is really surprising is that Washington is closer in the GE than Michigan, at least slightly!

[RonLPitts]

Michigan still might be competitive? There is absolutely no basis for that. IN fact Obama will win Michigan by a wider Margain than the Republican will win Georgia. The Republicans left that states Auto industry to rot and a big swath of voters have no taste for that.