Individual polls show varying snapshots of the Obama-Romney race: NBC News and the Wall Street Journal gave Obama a 5-point national lead in a survey published Tuesday night, while an AP-GfK poll released Wednesday morning pegged the president’s lead at just 1 point. Gallup’s tracking poll, meanwhile, showed Obama’s post-convention polling bounce fading to a 1-point lead.
Continue Reading
The rosiest picture of the race for Obama came this afternoon from the Pew Research Center, which found Obama drawing 51 percent of the vote to Romney’s 43 percent, leading on nearly every issue question and fighting his challenger to a draw on who would better handle the economy.
From the fog of survey data available on the 2012 race, some consistent, post-convention trends have clearly begun to emerge. In the most credible national polls, Obama rarely leads Romney by more than a few points. But the president is almost invariably in the lead.(Also on POLITICO: Romney woes jangle GOP nerves)
These polls were taken after the parties’ conventions, but mostly before the release this week of a controversial video of Romney this week in which he says that 47 percent of people don’t pay income taxes and are dependent on the government for services. Some data was collected before the attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in North Africa; some was collected afterward.
More problematic for Romney is the state-level data that gives Obama a slight edge in more than enough states to block his challenger from amassing 270 electoral college votes. Because of the makeup of the electoral map, Romney has to win nearly all the swing states on the table, while Obama only has to win a handful.
Of the biggest prizes up for grabs — Ohio, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina — Obama is the favorite in two, according to public surveys. NBC/Wall Street Journal polling and the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling gave Obama an edge in Ohio in the mid-to-high single digits. In Virginia, one survey from the Washington Post and another from Quinnipiac University, CBS News and the New York Times placed Obama at or above the 50 percent mark.
(Also on POLITICO: Romney 2012 RIP? Not so fast)
There has been little public polling in Florida — without which it becomes much harder for Romney to win — and strategists on both sides say the race there remains close. Only in North Carolina is Romney believed to have a slim edge.
In the bigger picture, it would take a national shift of several percentage points or the flipping of more than a few major swing states to put Romney back in the lead, and the momentum — with less than two months to go, doesn’t seem to be moving in the challenger’s direction.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81392.html#ixzz26xwFWWH8
