Obama up 8 in Pennsylvania

PPP's newest Pennsylvania poll finds things have changed very little in the state over the course of the last ten weeks. Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney 50-42, basically the same as his 49-42 advantage there in early March.

It doesn't look like Obama's going to have to worry too much about Pennsylvania this year, and that's a big change from what we found in our polling of the state over the course of 2011. Obama led by an average of less than a point in four PPP polls there last year. He was plagued by poor approval ratings then, but now voters are pretty evenly divided on him with 48% approving and 49% disapproving of the job he's doing. Meanwhile Romney continues to be unpopular, with just 37% of voters rating him positively to 51% with a negative opinion.

Obama and Romney are holding their party's voters in basically equal numbers, with Obama taking 80% of Democrats and Romney 78% of Republicans. In a state where Democrats have a large registration advantage Obama wins if that holds true. It's a departure from some past polls that found him under even 70% of the Democratic vote, but conservative whites seem to be moving back toward him just as they did after supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary. Obama's also up 48-24 with Pennsylvania's small contingent of independent voters.

Obama is up 56-36 with women and 64-28 with young voters, two groups that continue to help provide the base of his support in many swing states.

We tested a bunch of prominent Pennsylvania Republicans as potential running mates for Romney. The most helpful for him is Tom Ridge. Ridge has an impressive 50/32 favorability rating, making him more popular than any other politician in the state we've polled on recently. He would pull Romney to within a 48-43 margin of Obama.

Tom Corbett would also help Romney a little bit, bringing him within a 49-43 margin of Obama. That's interesting given that Corbett has a pretty bad 37/50 approval rating spread. That's worsened since it was 37/43 on a PPP poll in November. But there are at least a few people who would be more inclined to vote for Romney if Corbett was his running mate.

Rick Santorum emerged from the Presidential campaign with a pretty dreadful 36/53 favorability rating. It's dropped a net 7 points from -10 at 41/51 in early March. If he was on Romney's ticket Obama's lead would remain basically unchanged at 51/43.

We also looked at Pat Toomey and Lynn Swann as potential Romney running mates, Obama's lead would increase slightly with either of them on the ticket.

Barack Obama has a lot of things to worry about right now. But it doesn't look like Pennsylvania is one of them.

Full results here

Comments

[Peter Peirce]

Shame there's no mention of Gary Johnson here.

[George]

Based on PPP polls and recently released polls from Texas and Oklahoma the reason for the closeness of the national race as of now is due to the fact that Romney is racking up huge numbers in the Red states while Obama's numbers in a large number of swing states are in single digits and in many blue states only around 15%! I would really like to see a poll of Michigan and Oregon.

[Obama 2012]

Good news. Clearly it would be a very bad sign for the Obama campaign if Pennsylvania is in contention in November. Penn. needs to be safe Dem.

[Austin Cassidy]

A seriously flawed poll without the inclusion of Gary Johsnon.

[AG]

Rasmussen has Obama up 47-41 in Pennnsylvania. Not looking like a Romney pickup.

[Obama 2012]

I think Gary Johnson helps Obama (a little bit) but ... unless the Ron Paul people get behind him in a big way ... I don't think he'll make much of a dent.