Obama leads by 7 in Wisconsin

PPP's newest Wisconsin poll finds Barack Obama opening back up a wide lead in the state. He has 52% to 45% for Mitt Romney.  This is the largest lead we've found for Obama in the state since February. Our previous two polls had shown just a single point separating the two candidates.

One thing that's definitely not helping Romney is his comments about the '47%' this week. 86% of voters say they're familiar with what Romney said and 53% consider his comments to have been inappropriate, compared to only 40% who feel they were appropriate. 39% of independent voters say Romney's comments made them less likely to vote for him compared to only 20% who consider them a positive, and Obama's now opened up a 52-43 lead with independents.

The movement toward Obama in Wisconsin isn't all about Romney flubbing though. Obama's on pretty solid ground in his own right with 52% of voters approving of him to 47% who disapprove. That's up a net 9 points from a month ago when his approval spread was 46/50. Voters trust Obama more than Romney both on the issue of the economy (51/46) and on foreign policy (52/44).

Another major development in Wisconsin is that Democrats are starting to match the enthusiasm level of the Republicans, something they weren't able to do in the recall election in June. 65% of Democrats say they're 'very excited' about voting in the elections this fall compared to 63% of Republicans. A big part of the GOP's success in Wisconsin over the last couple years has been having the more fired up base, but it doesn't appear that advantage will continue to be in place this fall.

It was initially thought that Paul Ryan could be a big boost for the GOP ticket in Wisconsin, but that's not really proving to be the case. Voters in the state are closely divided on him with 48% rating him favorably to 47% with an unfavorable opinion. That's slightly down from a 49/45 spread on our August Wisconsin poll. It's not likely that Ryan's actually going to hurt the ticket in the state, but with voters that evenly divided on him he's not going to help much either.

Finally 52% of Wisconsin voters think Romney should release 12 years of his tax returns to 39% who think he should not.

Full results here

Comments

[Anonymous]

Wow, this poll shows an 18% increase in support for Obama from very/somewhat conservative voters compared to the previous PPP Wisconsin poll. How did that happen?

[Todd Dugdale]

Just a heads-up to all of the clueless conservatives that will soon be here: the cross-tabs, D/R/I, and sampling data are all in the link right above the comment section.

"Full results here" -- click on the word "here"

Also, PPP does not weight to partisan ID, so your cries of "Dem oversampling" (that you are merely parroting and fail to understand) are irrelevant to the results.

[Obama 2012]

Nice to see Wisconsin moving back into safe Obama territory.

Romney's path to 270 seems to keep shrinking (although the Colorado polls are a bit worrying)

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[salemst]

PPP is skewed far to the Left.
Rasmussen is most accurate according to Fordham University Research.
Tha others all way over sample Democrats.
GOP leads in voter registration 37.6-33.3% according to Rasmussen
In 2008 Democrats led 40-33% according to Rasmussen