Obama up big in New Hampshire

Barack Obama has a healthy lead in PPP's newest poll of New Hampshire, quite a shift from the polls we did in the state last year. He's at 53% to 41% for Mitt Romney. When PPP last looked at the general election in the state, July, Romney was up 46-44. In April of last year Obama led by just a 47-46 margin.

Obama's improvement comes thanks to an equation that's become familiar in our polling over the last few months: he's more popular than he was for most of last year, and Romney's a good deal less popular. Obama's approval is a 52/45 spread, up 10 points on the margin from 46/49 last July. Romney's meanwhile gone from having a slightly positive favorability rating at 43/42 to quite a negative one at 40/54. His numbers with Republicans have improved but he's gone from 25/58 to 8/89 with Democrats and from 43/40 to 38/53 with independents.

The Democratic Party is unifying around Obama. 10 months ago he had only an 82-12 lead with Democrats in the state but that's now 93-5. Independents have flipped from supporting Romney by 11 points at 46-35 to supporting Obama by 11 points at 50-39. Republicans have basically stayed in place, giving Romney 82% last summer and 82% now.

New Hampshire provides yet another example of Romney's struggles with women and young people. He trails 58-35 with women, more than offsetting his narrow 48-47 advantage with men. And he's down 59-29 with voters under 30, a more than 2:1 ratio with those who've already made up their minds.

There's been a lot of discussion the last few weeks about Kelly Ayotte as a potential running mate for Romney but she wouldn't make much of a difference. With her on the ticket Obama's lead just drops by a couple points to 52-42. Ayotte isn't all that popular in the state with 43% of voters approving of her and an equal 43% disapproving. Her predecessor Judd Gregg is more popular with a 44/35 favorability rating. But he wouldn't make a difference either with his hypothetical presence on the ticket still leaving Romney at a 52/41 disadvantage.

Gary Johnson gets 7% when included as a third party candidate in New Hampshire. He draws a little bit more from Romney than Obama, increasing the President's lead in the state to 13 points at 51-38.

Since Obama's at 93% of the Democratic vote and Romney at just 82% of the GOP vote, Romney has a lot more room to grow in New Hampshire over the next six months. But Obama's got a good cushion in the state and the change compared to a year ago is pretty remarkable.

Full results here

Comments

[Mark B.]

This is good news indeed! And I would add, that since Gary Johnson took only one point more from Romney than from the President, I think polling him may just be more interesting and relevant than with most Libertarian candidates. Especially given his high profile for a third-party candidate (former governor) I think his presence in the race may be significant. I do wonder if former Libertarian presidential nominee Ron Paul's partial suspension of his campaign will matter for Johnson.

[Jim Tomasik]

Thank you for including Gary Johnson in the polling. I would really love to see you folks do a three way poll in West Virginia. The primary last week makes me think Johnson could make some serious headway there.

[George]

This number is in line with the WMUR/UNH pollconducted about three weeks ago. If Obama is up big in swing states, my query is where is all the national tightening coming from. Is Romney running up nearly 70% margin in AL, MS, SC and several southern states? To some extent this may also be due to tightening in Safe Obama states such as MA and NY, where he leads now only by twenty. Also it appears Maine might have tightened a tad. Some tightening in Oregon and Michigan has also been reported, which brings me to the final point: it is time for a poll in Michigan and Oregon and perhaps sometime next month in PA. It would also be nice to poll the Senate races in both Nebraska (Kerry Vs the candidates) and Indiana (Donnelly Vs Murdock).

[Obama 2012]

Thanks to the women who look to be saving our country from the disaster that would be another Republican in the White House: "He trails 58-35 with women, more than offsetting his narrow 48-47 advantage with men."

[Rnegade]

Out of all 50 states, how many ballots as Gary Johnson managed to be on? Think we can get some 3-way polling data on those match-ups?

[Jay]

Thank you for including Gary Johnson!

[Mike]

Thank you for including Gary Johnson. Please continue to do so.

[A Chen]

Thank you for including Gary Johnson. I hope to see his status updated in future polls!