A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll reveals the prolonged nominating battle is taking a toll on the GOP candidates and finds the president’s standing significantly improved from late last year.The MoE is +/- 3.1 points (likely voters); this is a poll done by a combo of R and D pollsters. Full poll results can be downloaded here.President Barack Obama’s approval rating is 53 percent, up 9 percentage points in four months. Matched up against his Republican opponents, he leads Mitt Romney by 10 points (53-43) and Rick Santorum by 11 (53-42). Even against a generic, unnamed Republican untarnished by attacks, Obama is up 5 percentage points. In November, he was tied.
(Continue reading below the fold)
While Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney nationally in this poll 36-34, the numbers that pop out are these:
Romney is bloodied after nine contests, five of which he has lost. Only 33 percent of independents view him favorably, compared with 51 percent who see him in an unfavorable light. In a head-to-head match-up against Obama among independents, Romney now trails 49 percent to 27 percent.The Democratic pollsters say:
However, the President’s changing fortunes are not only a reflection of his own successes. Heady from their 2010 electoral successes, and amplified by the insular dynamics of the Presidential Primaries, the Republican Party has doubled down on its severely conservative agenda as well as its strategy of denying the President even the most modest of achievements; the dangers of this high-risk gambit for the GOP are starting to show. The Republican primary process has primarily served to reveal its candidates as deeply flawed individuals with very high negative ratings among women voters in particular.The Republican pollsters say:
The impact of this contested primary is also seen on the Presidential ballots where Barack Obama has pushed his ballot support over 50% and now holds a nine-point lead over Romney (52%- 43%) and a ten-point lead over Santorum (53%-43%) – with the key point being that the President is now running ahead of the generic ballot by four-points for the first time and the two Republican candidates are running behind the generic ballot (which is 49% Obama and 44% for the Republican).What neither says is that the GOP candidates are so bad that they've succeeded in make this a choice election instead of a referendum on peace and prosperity. But that's just as much a part of these numbers as anything else.Again, nothing in this latest Battleground poll data is totally unexpected for this stage of a presidential election cycle, and certainly not predictive of the eventual outcome. The warning signs are flashing for Republicans, however, and it is certainly a phase of the campaign that Republicans need to bring to an end sooner as opposed to later.
Comment Preferences