Obama has small lead in Nevada

PPP's newest Nevada poll finds Barack Obama holding on to a small lead in the state over Mitt Romney, 50-47. Obama's advantage has been declining over the course of the year. In late March we found him up 8 points, in early June it was down to 6 points, and now the advantage is at 3.

Romney's keeping it close despite Democrats' registration advantage in Nevada because he's ahead 51-41 with independents. Romney is also blowing Obama out with white voters, 57-40. Obama leads anyway largely because he has a 67-28 advantage with Hispanics.

Nevadans narrowly disapprove of the job Obama is doing, with 48% giving him good marks to 49% who are unhappy with him. Romney has negative favorability numbers with 46% of voters viewing him positively to 49% with an unfavorable opinion. But that's up a net 9 points from June when he was at a -12 spread (41/53).

A lot of that improvement has to do with Republicans continuing to warm up to Romney. His favorability with them is now 85/13 after previously being 71/23. We saw similar improvement for him on our Iowa poll over the weekend with GOP voters where he's now at 82/12 compared to a previous 72/19.

We also included Gary Johnson in an iteration of this poll, but he gets just 2% and doesn't have much of an impact on the race. When he's in the picture Obama continues to lead Romney by 3 points at 49-46. Johnson's generally polled better when we've included him in other states and this poor showing may reflect voters getting serious as the election comes nearer and committing to either Obama or Romney instead of casting a protest vote.

Other notes from Nevada:

-53% of voters think Romney should release his tax returns to 44% who think he should not.

-There are large gender and generational gaps in the Nevada polling. Obama's up 11 points with women (54-43) and 13 points with voters under 45 (56-43). But Romney leads by 8 with men (52-44) and 4 with voters over 45 (49-45).

Full results here

Comments

[William Jefferson Jr.]

A poll taken on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? Don't we vote on Tuesdays? Why the focus on what people think as the weekend approaches?

[George]

Real clear politics says that you have a poll from Connecticut saying that Obama is leading by 13 there. I dont see it on your website. Is that a mistake by RCP?

[Jeff]

blah blah.

Obama is going to win this state. I remember how all the polls were saying that Angle was going to beat Reid. Angle lost because the polls under-estimated the hispanic vote and over polled the white vote. Much like they are doing now.

[Dustin Ingalls]

George, we did the CT poll for the League of Conservation Voters. We tweeted about it yesterday, with a link to the results.